February 12, 2015
Ushering in the Year of the Goat with Lion Dance and God of Fortune Welcome by Edward Jay Goldberg Senior Vice President, Macy s Public Affairs John Wang President, AABDC Introduction of Community Service Award Honoree by Wellington Chen Executive Director, Chinatown Partnership LDC. Presentation of Community Service Award to Corky Lee Traditional Asian Dance and Musical Performance
The Year of the Goat Dear Friends, I would like to welcome everyone to our annual Lunar New Year Reception. And I want to thank Terry J. Lundgren, Macy s Chairman and CEO, and Ed J. Goldberg, Macy s Senior Vice President, for hosting this splendid event. Over the years, Macy s has been a great supporter of AABDC s various activities, in particular our annual Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business Award Gala Dinner. The Goat is the eighth of the twelve-year cycle of animals in the Chinese zodiac. The Goat is said to be a symbol of Peace, Harmony and Tranquility. That is good news for our volatile world, as I know we all look forward to a more peaceful year with abundant goodwill, when prosperity will prevail. This annual event provides a terrific opportunity to pay homage to our traditions and to celebrate with all New Yorkers our past achievements and new horizons. Each year we take advantage of the Lunar New Year Reception to honor a successful Asian American from the creative arts world. This year we will recognize a well-known photographer, Corky Lee. I would also like to offer my sincere thanks to all the organizations that supported this year s event: Bloomingdale s, Con Edison and Colgate-Palmolive, UPS. Finally, thank you for joining us tonight to celebrate the upcoming Year of the Goat. We appreciate your continued support and hope to work with you to build a stronger partnership in the coming year. Sincerely yours, John Wang President Asian American Business Development Center
The Year of the Goat
COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD HONOREE of his photographs has their own narrative and some have had a profound affect. In 1975 Lee took a picture of a Chinese American being hauled away by the police after he was injured by them. The picture, on the front page of the New York Post, caused 20,000 people to march from Chinatown to City Hall protesting against police brutality. Corky Lee (born as Lĭ Yángguó 1948 in Queens, New York City) is a self-taught award winning freelance photojournalist, who for the last 40 years has chronicled Asian Americans. He has been referred to as the Unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate. The main thrust of Lee s work has been to document the diversity and nuances of Asian American culture that are often overlooked by mainstream media and to make sure it is included in American history. Lee s interest in history began in 1965 when he studied American history at Queens College. Combining his love of history and his skill as a photographer, Lee has covered the lives of Asian Americans from day-to-day living to civil rights protests. Each one May 5, 1988 was proclaimed Corky Lee Day by New York City Mayor David Dinkins in recognition of the important contribution of Lee s work to New York City. This lifelong passion to capture the images of ordinary Asian Americans was ignited by an old photograph about an historical event that Lee saw when he was in high school. He learned that over 12,000 Chinese laborers worked on the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad from Sacramento, California to Promontory Point, Utah in 1869. However, no Chinese were included in the historic ceremonial commemoration photo. Last year, Lee traveled the country to organize a flash mob to photographically reclaim history on the 145th anniversary of the reenactment photograph. Over 200 Asian Americans gathered on
The Year of the Goat the morning of May 10, 2014. At least six in the crowd were direct descendants of laborers who came from San Francisco, New York City and Salt Lake City. Lee called this moment, a photographic act of justice. This was achieved with the assistance of a consortium of 16 community organizations. Later in the month, the US Department of Labor also inducted Chinese railroad workers of the First Transcontinental Railroad into their Hall of Fame. Corky Lee s photographs have been featured in two traveling exhibits by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Washington, DC as well as Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles, Museum of Chinese in America and the New York Historical Society. Most recently a dozen images were acquired by the National Overseas Chinese Museum of History in Beijing.
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