Pardon Videos
2018–2023
In 2018, I was asked by API RISE to make a pardon video for Billy Taing, who was placed in ICE detention and needed a governor’s pardon to prevent his deportation. Billy is a Cambodian refugee whose family had survived the Khmer Rouge and who grew up in my hometown in the San Gabriel Valley. In this video, I made the case for why Billy deserves to stay in the United States. Visually, I aimed to challenge otherized representations of Southeast Asian bodies by framing Billy with dignity, as the protagonist in his own story. In November of 2018, after a pardon campaign in partnership with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition and Root & Rebound, Billy received his pardon from then Governor Brown. Eventually, Billy became a unionized electrician and joined API RISE as their Director. During the 2020 Pandemic, Billy would become an integral part of my mutual aid network. Our mothers, who still lived in the San Gabriel Valley, often donated food from their gardens to one another.
In 2019, I made a pardon video for Danny Tongsy in partnership with the Asian Prisoner Support Committee and Asian American Advancing Justice. Danny was born in a Thai refugee camp after his family fled the United States’ Secret War in Laos. In 2020, Danny was pardoned by Governor Newsom and enrolled in UC Berkeley’s Underground Scholar Initiative.
From 2021–2023, recognizing the limitations of the pardon video form, I expanded on this work by developing a video production class, Social Documentation & Asian Americans at the Claremont Colleges. In this class, students collaborated with API RISE on a pardon video and integrated the frameworks of reciprocity and lived experience drawn from Asian American canonical texts such as Omatsu’s Anti-Colonial Principals for Teaching and Learning.
SELECT PRESS
Root & Rebound / Berkeley News
CREDITS
Editor, Brian Leong / Additional Camera, Lan Nguyen