Kai Kai Mascarenas, AAST Program Coordinator, and Marjorie Antonio, Previous AAST Minor, featured in the DBK

On October 25, 2022, Kai Kai Mascarenas, AAST Program Coordinator, and Marjorie Antonio, previous AAST minor and recent UMD graduate (‘22), were featured in the Diamondback’s article, “UMD Filipino community celebrates Filipino American history month with art activism”.

The University of Maryland’s Filipino American community gathered Friday night to celebrate Filipino American History Month with art activism and to mourn those lost to human rights abuses in the Philippines.

The event was a collaboration between the university’s Filipino Cultural Association and the Asian American Studies program.

“Tonight’s action is an art activist demonstration as part of the legacy of putting our activism in art and how it constructs a transnational political participation through art,” Marjorie Antonio said, a recent graduate and founding director of the association’s FCArts who spoke at the event.

The talk was led by Antonio, Chrissi Fabro, a Filipino American youth activist, and Kai Kai Mascarenas, an activist and program coordinator for the university’s Asian American studies program.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of martial law in the Philippines, when President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. started a 14-year period marked by human rights abuses targeting anyone who spoke out against his regime.

Marcos Sr.’s legacy looms large since his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., became president in June. Marcos Jr. has continued the brutal drug war that was started by the previous president, Rodrigo Duterte, that has claimed thousands of lives, largely without due process.

You can read the full article here.