Day: October 22, 2021

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In the News: AABANY Member Lina Lee Comments on Hurricane Ida Basement-Flooding Deaths

In early September, Hurricane Ida made landfall in New York City and left countless individuals to suffer the aftermath of flooded basements. A closer look into the eleven basement-flooding deaths reveals that a majority of them were Asian residents. A number of factors played into this tragedy including a lack of affordable housing, climate change, and pandemic change. These issues are prominent among low-income Asian immigrants who resort to illegal basement apartments that are deemed to have unsafe living conditions. 

“Realistically, a lot of these tenants would have family members, many who are clustered into very, very small rooms,” said Lina Lee, executive director of housing justice nonprofit organization Communities Resist. “When you have these natural disasters, there’s obviously going to be really a life-and-death situation, and when you have very limited or no access to leave your living space, these families really had no way out.”

Lee continues, “They cluster in small communities where they are able to access people who speak the same language, who are from the same culture and are living in the same conditions that they have to live in. For them, they have nowhere else to live with, except those small pockets in Queens.” 

Punishing tenants is not an ideal solution. Lee said reporting landlords for housing violations enforces building codes which could prompt agencies to issue a vacate order and inadvertently force a tenant to move out.The Mayor proposes an emergency warning system for basement-dwellers but the victims’ families are not convinced. 

To read the full NBC News article, click here. 

Lina Lee will also be the moderator for a program titled “Fighting for Housing And Community Justice: The Role of Lawyers In The Movement” at AABANY’s Fall Conference on Saturday, October 23. Click here for more information. 

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Don Liu Featured on Ascend Leadership’s #TheOtherSide

Ascend Leadership, one of the largest professional membership organizations that represent the interests of Asian American/Pacific Islander professionals within North America, has featured Don Liu in its #TheOtherSide campaign.

Don Liu currently serves as the Executive Vice President and Chief Legal and Risk Officer at Target Corporation.  Despite his notable successes, Mr. Liu’s career path demonstrates the prevalence of discrimination in Asian American professional life.

Don, a graduate of Columbia Law School, was one of many Asian American business and professional leaders invited to discuss their perspectives on Asian Americans and the workplace as part of Ascend Leadership’s #TheOtherSide campaign.  Mr. Liu reflected on his encounters with racial stereotyping during his extensive and distinguished legal career.  

In his first year of practice, Mr. Liu was exposed to others’ characterization of him as the “stereotyped Asian American worker bee.”  He was assigned to work on a large case simply because of the false impression that he “would never miss a typo.”  

“I guess I should be thankful, but on the other hand, that’s so unlike me,” Mr. Liu notes.  “I’m a big thinker, strategic thinker.  I think that’s my strength.  I was not going to wind up being that stereotyped Asian American worker bee.”

To watch Don Liu’s interview for the #TheOtherSide campaign, click here.  

To learn more about the #TheOtherSide campaign, click here.

To help ensure that future leaders in the legal profession do not succumb to the same stereotyping that Don faced, two Past Presidents of AABANY, Jean Lee and Mike Huang, founded the Don H. Liu Scholars Program in 2014.  The Program seeks to identify, cultivate and inspire future Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) leaders within the legal profession to address the single most important reality facing AAPI professionals today: the barrier to advancement.

To support emerging AAPI leaders, the Program continues to award each of three Scholars a financial scholarship of $15,000.  The Scholars also receive mentorship and assistance with their career development from leading AAPI lawyers from across AABANY’s network.
The deadline for consideration for the 2021 Don H. Liu Scholarship is November 15, 2021.  For more information as well as application information, click here.