Leslie Lum is leaving the board of the International Examiner after seven years of service. She leaves a lasting impact and legacy of advocating for the power of independent journalism, pivoting the conversation around representation of Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Americans (ANHPIA) in the regional news.
During Lum’s seven years on the board, from 2019 to 2025, she helped shepherd the nonprofit organization through the pandemic, daylit regional arts and news coverage, helped run the Community Voice Awards annual fundraiser, and oversaw leadership staff transitions.
As a business instructor at Bellevue College as well as a writer and artist, Leslie has brought a rare and highly appreciated cross section of business acumen and advocacy for news coverage to the International Examiner.
Jill Wasberg: You’re a business instructor at Bellevue College, and you’ve melded that work experience with your duty as an IE board member. What stories did you share with the IE that you brought from that experience?
Leslie Lum: I have been involved in many social justice incidents at Bellevue College. The first was in the early 2000s when a number of women of color were terminated.
This followed a math incident where the question, “Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300-foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second.” The question went on to ask when the watermelon will hit the ground, based on a formula provided.
This prompted outrage in the Black community where they felt it propagated a racial stereotype and denigrated Secretary of State Rice. As was typical of incidents at that time, the employees of color were tasked with running workshops, education sessions and generally cleaning up the mess. Incredibly, we got huge backlash including an editorial by Bruce Ramsey (Oct. 6, 2006) who likened the DEI sessions to Maoist re-education camps, a direct attack on the Asian American women who were leading the effort. The International Examiner published an op-ed from the Asian American women concerned.
In February 2020, Asian American and Pacific Islander faculty, staff, and students brought Erin Shigaki’s art installation “Never Again is Now,” an 11-foot high mural of two children standing in a concentration camp to commemorate the Day of Remembrance. It was the only Day of Remembrance commemoration in Bellevue.
A member of the Bellevue College administration defaced the artist description by covering the following sentence with white out:
“After decades of anti-Japanese agitation, led by Eastside businessman Miller Freeman and others, the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans included the 60 families (300 individuals) who farmed Bellevue.”
The white supremacist campaigns of Miller Freeman are well documented, as are the efforts to downplay or cover up his role in driving Japanese Americans out of Bellevue. This erasure of history was so successful that even many of the social justice activists at the college did not know about it.
The administration made several attempts at restoration which seemed to amount to asking the AAPI faculty and staff to fix the mess. The students spoke out immediately, making eloquent statements in television interviews, while the administration was unavailable for comment. The students documented the process and took photographs which were credited and used in national articles. They created art that spoke to how the defacement impacted them personally.
The Japanese American Community asked that a Remembrance Ceremony be held. An estimated 500 people attended.
The IE assisted with articles about the incident, publicizing the fact that Bellevue College curtailed its Asian American studies after the incident, even though Bellevue College has, by far, the largest Asian student population and the incident demonstrated how important it was for everyone to understand Asian American history.
JW: How has the culturally-specific arts coverage the IE provides factored into your interest in serving as a board member?
LL: The IE can play a huge role in getting the history out. It’s a history that is transnational and global. It is unique because there isn’t another Asian American community that worked coalitions so well.
Women figure prominently in many of the struggles. People like Joan Yoshitomi [current IE board member] and Martha Choe [former Seattle city councilmember] are part of this.
Independent presses are shrinking exponentially. I am so heartened that the IE is in a great position to continue being a huge voice for the arts and perhaps a real publishing house. In the age of AI, I predict that deep reading and hard copy is going to make a huge comeback.
JW: Your next big endeavor is writing a memoir on your mom’s life, which sounds fascinating and is likely of strong interest to the IE’s readership.
LL: My mother was an activist in Vancouver, Canada. The grassroots organization that she founded along with other people stopped a massive urban renewal project that was going to put a freeway through Chinatown and destroy their homes. I found that it was a common story for almost all of the Chinatowns in North America. But this was the only time it was stopped completely.
My mother’s father died when she was four and her mother when died when she was eight. She never spoke of them. Luckily, my family had the registration certificate for my grandmother, and I was able to find out that she was a mui tsai which is a girl who is sold by another family.
She arrived in Canada in 1894 at the age of eight and probably lived in Chinatown until she died at the age of 39. My mother and her sister were raised by the men who lived in the same house as their stepfather and them. They cooked for them, took them to movies and taught them Chinese.
My father came over as an eighteen-year-old and lived the liquid labor life of Chinese immigrants. He moved from one occupation to another, thwarted by white supremacists and politicians who were trying to drive the Chinese out. He was a cook, a logger, ran a green grocer business, and packed shingles. Most of the Chinese in my father’s generation were transnationals, and it’s been amazing to research the combined history.
It’s been a cathartic experience to see what the Chinese overcame to survive in Canada. Researching has helped me understand my own identity.
It’s a story that everyone should know. I’m hoping that telling it through my family will make it more accessible. I’ve gotten a rough first draft and hope to have it more polished in the next year and out to a publisher.
JW: You were on the board during a very tenuous time in the IE’s existence – the pandemic years. Do you recall any moments during that time regarding keeping the paper going that stuck with you?
LL: There have been many moments when we were on the brink, but the amazing thing is, people have always stepped up to help. Board member SuJ’n Chon [IE board president] did a superhuman job of keeping the IE sustainable with grant applications and managing turnover.
Now Travis Quezon has come back as executive editor, and he will bring a wealth of knowledge and a broad set of skills. We have new board members who bring new perspectives and energy. People believe in the IE. It holds a huge place in our community and hearts.
I joined the IE board in 2019, at the urging of Arlene Oki who has been a long-time board member. Arlene is of Ron Chew’s generation. They fought for AAPI civil rights for decades. They started many of the seminal organizations in the ID.
Some of this is documented in the IE but there is a lot more. Read books like Seattle In Coalition and it talks about the roles that Doug Chin and Ruthann Kurose played in fighting for economic and racial equality.
It is a phenomenal story and just beginning to be told. I hope that the IE will continue to tell that story. It’s been an honor to be on the board of IE. It is an amazing community that stretches across generations and place.
