With Congress’ vote to approve the rescissions request, we at CAAM would like to express our deep disappointment with the decision to eliminate previously approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Through the elimination of funding to CPB, CAAM stands to lose 40% of our annual budget. The efforts to defund CPB have given CAAM the opportunity to reflect upon our founding relationship to public media and to consider our work moving forward.
Since our beginning, we have always faced challenges with inspiration and ambition. In 1980, filmmaker Loni Ding organized a conference, designed specifically to seek out support through CPB, that led to the formation of CAAM. What was important then, is even more important today: our conviction that Asian American history and storytelling are invaluable, irreplaceable American perspectives. Before I started at CAAM, I worked as an Associate Producer on Loni’s landmark PBS series Ancestors in America. I was privileged to listen to Loni’s many decades of incredible work, bound together by two ideals: hope and change.
CAAM’s partnership with public media has fundamentally defined the work we do and has given us unique sensitivities and leverage as a national organization that has brought hundreds of films and programs about Asian American experiences to public media viewers nationwide. We aspire to infuse all of our work, whether through our Documentary Fund, CAAMFest, or talent development programs, with a wider lens that bridges and strengthens—not divides— the sometimes difficult national conversations. Our ethos that more, not fewer voices, enriches America through a greater understanding of itself, could only have been discovered through our relationship with public media.
Our concerns are not merely about our future sustainability, but more importantly, a national commitment towards a shared common good, an antidote to commercial interests. While we are anxious about our future, we embrace this as a moment to strengthen who we are, what we do, and who we do it on behalf of.
We can’t depend on elected officials to support stories from Asian America. With devastating losses to public media funding, your support of CAAM is more critical than ever. Please consider making a tax-deductible gift today to help us continue to mentor, produce, distribute, and celebrate these vital voices. Every contribution makes a difference.
I want to take this moment especially to recognize and appreciate the constellation of filmmakers, public media partners, and media arts organizations who are hurting right now. So many of you have dedicated your work solely on behalf of a greater public interest. Our obligation is to honor that work by coming together, and re-imagining how to build upon the legacies we’ve created jointly. CAAM will be more emboldened, and more committed to hope and change. To succumb to these present challenges would be a betrayal to the promise of our founding.
Sincerely,
Don Young
CAAM Executive Director
