Uncategorized


As you all may or may not know, Maganda Magazine Issue 21 “Legal” is now available for distribution. If you’d like to purchase an issue ($10-$15 sliding scale donation w/ additional $4+ for shipping & handling) please contact maganda.distribution@gmail.com for more information.

Editor in Chief: Cristal Fiel
Production Coordinator: Justine Rivero
Literary Editors: Jacqueline Fauni and Brian Adrias
Media & Layout Editors: Christine Ilagan and Janina Concepcion
Marketing & Finance Coordinator: Jaime So
Events Coordinator: Elaine Legaspi
Distribution & Public Relations: Patricia Carino
Campus Relations Coordinator: Brian Batugo
International Liaison and Correspondent (from China): Alex Tan
Webmaster: Justin Gonzaga
Consultants: Keith Licardo and Alex Cariaso

Here’s to an exciting new year!

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Luisa M. Antonio
415 255 2347
 
 
No Fellow Warrior Left Behind
“US SENATE PASSES VETERANS BENEFITS FOR FILIPINO VETERANS 96-1″
 
San Francisco CA- The US Senate began deliberation on S.1315 on April 22, 2008 and today, with a vote of 96-1, the bill was finally passed. This bill is generally an omnibus bill enhancing benefits to most US veterans. The provision of S.57 was partly incorporated in S. 1315 which will afford the Filipino veterans in the US to receive the same benefits as those of their US veteran counterpart. Those who are residing in the Philippines shall receive a monthly special pension of $300/month if the bill is finally signed into law.
 
“We would like to thank the leadership of the Senators Inouye and Senator Akaka for making it a possibility for this bill to pass. This is our long awaited desire to be recognized for all our sacrifices during World War II,” said veteran Baldonado, SF Commissioner and VEC board member.
 
Senator Inouye reminded legislators, in his very emotional speech today ,about the bravery of Filipino soldiers during the Bataan Death March. According to Inouye, “for their courage and contributions during World War II the Filipino veterans deserve to live in dignity and that passing the bill shall restore their honor.”
 
Calling the Filipino veterans benefit as a costly provision, Senator Richard Burr from North Carolina strongly opposed the provision giving benefits to the Filipino veterans. His amendment was rejected by a majority vote of 56-41.
 
Senator Akaka (D-HI), Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee had shown full support not only to the Filipino veterans but to all US war veterans. He said t hat the “passage of S. 1315 is about honor and is the right thing to do. This is America’s moral obligation. No fellow warrior shall be left behind.”
 
The original 200,000 Filipino World War II veterans who fought side by side with the US veterans are now mostly octogenarians and barely 18,000 are alive.  For more than half a century, the Filipino World War II veterans have been seeking for just and equal recognition as US veterans.  The house bill  HR 760  should continue to gain support from legislators in the House with the passage of S. 1315 in Senate.  The San Francisco Veterans Equity Center with other veterans advocacy group shall aggressively continue to work for the passage of these veterans bill until it is finally signed into law. For those who wish to participate in the advocacy, please contact VEC at 415 255. 2347 or email at sfvec2000@yahoo. com.

Crazy busy planning for two events, the finalization of this year’s issue, staff selections, and a collaborative publication with other UC Berkeley campus publications.  We ambitious, we is.

EVENTS:

MONDAY, APRIL 28th, 7pm in 200 Wheeler Hall (UC Berkeley Campus):: PINOY SIGHTINGS: FILM SCREENING AND WORKSHOP WITH PATRICIO GINELSA (director of Black Eyed Peas Bebot videos and film Lumpia

 Come join {m}aganda magazine and featured artist Patricio Ginelsa April 28th, 7-10pm in 200 Wheeler as we dive into the world of hollywood, movies, and music videos.

Ginelsa, most famous for his work directing Black Eyed Peas music videos, will be presenting Pinoy Sightings: a video presentation on Pilipino representation in the media, behind the scenes, and in hip-hop.

Pinoy Sightings, made over the course of 7 years, is a compilation of Pin@y Sightings in the media. A Pin@y Sighting is defined as a rare occurrence in mainstream media, when a reference to the Pilipino community is made. You’ve most likely caught one. Here you are watching a TV sitcom one night and all of a sudden, the main character says “Joey’s friend is Pilipino” out of the blue. Or perhaps, you’re sitting in a movie theater and all of a sudden, the cook enters the scene in the background speaking Tagalog and offers the movie star some chicken adobo.

While some of the clips may be familiar, there are some that will surprise you. Are these Pinoy Sightings for real??? Ginelsa is here to prove to you they exist!!

Please Join us for a fun and challenging night as we explore the implications and manifestations of representing culture in mainstream media.

What does it mean to represent “culture” in a mainstream space?
How do the realities of working in an industry where your voice is not always represented affect decision making and opportunities?
What is it like to work behind the scenes and in hip hop?

Come join us April 28th and find out!!

RSVP on Facebook if you wanna come!!

SATURDAY, MAY 3rd, 2pm in Tilden Room, MLK Bldg (UC Berkeley Campus):: MAGANDA MAGAZINE ISSUE 21: LEGAL LAUNCH RECEPTION

 Please join Maganda for an afternoon of performances, artwork, raffle, food, an open mic, and most importantly the release of our 21st issue: Legal!!  Our entire year has been culminating in to this one event, so it would be kinda sad if you read this blog, and then miss out.  (But we don’t blame you if you’re busy!!)  Attendees will get the opportunity to speak their piece as it relates to the theme following scheduled performers.  Don’t miss out on this opportunity.  Also, our t-shirts will be on sale!!!

RSVP on Facebook or email m21reception@gmail.com if you’re interested in going and need more details.

Also, please email maganda.distribution@gmail.com if you want to purchase our latest issue!!!

STAFF SELECTIONS:

Deciding who our up-and-coming Maganda heroines and heroes will be is so important that we are going to make an event out of it.  Are you interested in partaking in the production of our magazine and vision as an arts organization?  Join us on Tuesday, April 29th, at 7pm as we select staff for Maganda Magazine 22!!! Email maganda.magazine@gmail.com if you have any questions.  More details to be posted soon.

THE X MAGAZINE:

In collaboration with Onyx Express, hardboiled magazine, la voz, and Al Bayan (UC Berkeley Campus publications), Maganda will co-publish THE X MAGAZINE, to be distributed on Monday, May 5th.  More details to come.

 

By the way, we are pleased to announce that we were awarded “Best Literary Publication” at the ASUC Publication Awards that took place last Wednesday for issue 20: Our Activisms. We’d like to specially thank all contributors of last year’s issue, as your work made it best literary.  Thanks to you all, we were able to receive a monetary award to continue publishing your voices! Hurrah!! We do mattter!!! Of course, we knew that already.  But it’s nice to get an affirmation from someone else every now and then.

It’s going to be an exciting next week. Join us!!!

- C. Fiel

Sorry.  We’ve been a studious blog lately and haven’t had the time to write anything meaningful during this midterm season.  We are lame, inconsistent liars.  Or at least I am…. Yes, I am a liar… In any case, since I just finished a midterm today and I’m at work staring at the computer screen, I thought I might take this time to be more productive by updating you readers on the Maganda haps.

Next week on Thursday March 20th, we have our second Artists Dialogue/Open Gallery of the year in 170 Barrows at 7pm.  You’ll get an opportunity to get personable with the artists and their work, which is always fun.  If you’re interested in submitting work, it’s not too late! Just email “magandagallery AT gmail DOT com” by this Thursday, March 13th for more information.

Also, please remember to mark your calendars for our first ever Film Event on Wednesday, April 9th, more details to be announced. 

And don’t forget about our most important event of the year, our annual magazine launch reception.  This is to take place on Saturday, May 3rd from 2-5pm, location TBA.  Contributors of the magazine get to display their work and/or perform their words as the public gets to enjoy its first contact with our 21st issue: Legal.  Yay!  And if you weren’t able to submit anything, don’t worry!  There is sure to be an open mic after scheduled performances, and Maganda lurves first timers, so you are encouraged to start thinking about what to write, then actually writing it, and then possibly practicing it before the event.  But friends, you’re getting two months notice and that is plenty of time.

As Distributions coordinator, my basic responsibility is to get our magazine out in the public.  On a personal level, it is kind of hard because of lack of resources and time.  So my apologies if you’re like, “WTF? I don’t see Maganda anywhere!“  If you feel like you can do my job better than me, by all means I am open to constructive criticism.  In fact, I’m not sure why I have never thought of advertising this before, but if you are interested in purchasing our issues, or if you have any sort of suggestions on how we can effectively distribute our magazine, please email “maganda.distribution AT gmail DOT com” and I’ll be happy to fulfill our request and/or read your advice.

On that note, if you have any comments or suggestions for us blogger(s) and/or what you would like to see more/less of,  let (us) know!

- C. Fiel

Note: This is not a post about Bob the Builder or Barack Obama.

In this fast-at-you technological age that allows one to come into contact with a distant relative across the world within a millisecond flat, we here at Maganda wonder:

Is it possible for us to keep up with the times?  Can we actually achieve the status of a well-read, well-researched blog that puts out entries at least twice a week?  A blog that goes beyond being a website for event announcements with (sometimes) quirky one-liners to add a bit more detail than what is already stated on a flier?  Can we be what we say we are on our about page?

We’ll be the first to admit that in the past six months since our new site has been up and running, we haven’t been the blog that we said we were.  And we are a little ashamed, yes.  But as our co-editor in chief, Patrici Flores, has previously stated, “students are wholly responsible for running Maganda Magazine.”  Amidst studying for school, attending weekly Maganda meetings, producing a magazine, event planning, and all that good stuff that you have to be involved with during college (like protests and rallies and other avenues of civil disobedience), maintaining a blog is probably at the back of every one’s mind.  Our apologies for being busy college students.

That said, we are hesitant to promise that this blog will be any less sporadic than it has been, but we are going to try our darnedest to update it more often.  Maganda is just coming into blogging, so we still have a lot of fine-tuning to work out.  We still remember the days of Xanga and talking about school like it was interesting to anyone else.  The funny thing is that that wasn’t so long ago.  Now blogs have turned into an arena of professionality and the Maganda blog is meant to be professional work. 

So whilst we transition from the Xanga realm of he-said she-said into what a professional blog should look like and speak like, we are going to do the event announcement thing just so you know that we still exist.  And hopefully, that is enough for you all, good readers.

Here, we leave you with a quote we found in a post that was never published.  In response to why he does photography, Rick Rocamora stated at our Artist Dialogue event back in October:

“We have to be the ones to define ourselves [through art/writing/photography/our actions] or it will be others who reflect our history.”

Let that marinade.

- C. Fiel

That’s right folks, we extended the deadline!

Passions, rants, articles, visions, love songs and more will be accepted until January 20th, 2008. For more information on how and what to submit, visit our Call for Submissions page!

dsc_0070-1.jpg

Hello, dear readers-

If you haven’t noticed yet, students are wholly responsible for running Maganda Magazine–the publication, the organization, and the blog. Every day since the beginning of the school semester, we’ve been faced with the challenges of maintaining a newer, larger staff with a reinvigorated mission, while also making sure we keep our grades at least above average (in other words- not failing). Thus, we apologize for the sparse amount of updating to this site- it’s simply suffering from growing pains. This little web child of ours may not grow up to become a doctor, but we at least hope it’ll attain a little bit of greatness. For now, we hope it gets over its adolescent identity crisis.

What does that mean for you, dear reader? It means soon enough, you’ll have a blog with a clearer focus, more regular, interactive content, along with breaking news and events from the Filipino community, arts community, and beyond. Maybe you’ll even get to catch a few glimpses into our grassroots magazine production process, which usually takes place in between Psychology and Sociology lectures.

For now, we have to study for finals.

See you soon,

Patrici Flores

Editor-in-Chief

The Home section of today’s San Francisco Chronicle has a feature on Filipinos celebrating Christmas along with some pretty heartwarming pictures of little kiddies making parols.

I got my own capiz shell parol last Christmas season and was excited to have my own parol to put when I decorated last week. It is by far my favorite Christmas decoration. It is nice to look at something in the media and actually see yourself reflected back. That’s one of the invaluable perks of living in a diverse community like the Bay Area.

Here you’ll find the SF Chron’s “Pinoy Pod” that discusses the history of parols and how to make one.

Make your own parol with step-by-step instructions here, here and here.

T-Shirt Design

[click image to enlarge]

Maganda is selling T-shirts for $15/piece.
If you want to rep Maganda Magazine
please email maganda.distribution[at] gmail[dot]com
for more information and to purchase one.