Welcome everyone to our brave new world – celebrating APABA-PA, our friendships, our accomplishments, and our future – in the age of virtual events!
Here tonight are 144 attendees, from 50 cities, 12 states, 2 countries
My name is Djung Tran, president of APABA-PA
I am happy to see in attendance today our judges, fellow bar leaders, and community leaders, including:
o Judges – Hon. Ida Chen, Stella Tsai, Ashely Chan
o NAPABA – President Bonnie Wolf, E.D. Priya Purandare
o PA Gov’s Advisory Comm’n on APA Affairs – E.D. Stephanie Sun
o PA Bar Ass’n – incoming president David Schwager
o Philly Bar Ass’n – Chancellor, Hon. Mike Snyder
o Philly Bar Found – E.D. Jessica Hilburn-Holmes
o MontCo Bar Ass’n – President Patrick Kurtas
o Barristers Ass’n of Phila.– President Dominique Ward
o Hispanic Bar Ass’n Legal Education Fund – President Melissa Martinez
o SABA Philly – Jasmeet Ahuja
o AABANY – President Sapna Palla
o Rutgers Law School – Dean Louis Thompson
o We are happy to see you all here tonight – members, law students, colleagues, and mentors!
We are especially honored to welcome the Marutani family – Marcia, Olivia, Laurel, and Wesley – who get to say that the learned, compassionate, and down-to-earth Judge William Marutani was their dad. We continue to remember and honor Judge Marutani by supporting law students’ public interest and government agency summer work experience.
We thank all our donors for continuing to support APABA-PA, and recognize DLA Piper as our most generous donor. We hope that you will agree that APABA-PA does important work, and we invite you to support us in whatever way you can.
Tonight almost did not happen. We thought about not doing an Annual Banquet this year, because how can we have a banquet without giving hugs, sharing food and drink, running into old friends, and possibly making new ones? We cannot replicate the in-person sharing in this virtual forum. But a virtual event means that anyone can attend from anywhere – and we are happy to welcome friends from far afield! After our formal program, please stay with us to relax and get to know other attendees, much as you would at our usual banquet. Let us know how we did! I am sure we will make mistakes, but in this new normal we have to try new things and adapt to new circumstances, and we will learn and improve.
From possibly not happening at all we find ourselves celebrating our Annual Banquet on the day of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. This day marks the time of year when we harvest nature’s bounty, and we celebrate family reunions. Families and friends gather to eat and eat and then eat some more – especially moon cakes. If you have moon cakes in your home, please eat some in honor of the Festival today!
APABA-PA has had a busy year. While we have not been able to hold many of our in-person events, we have bravely ventured into the virtual realm to hold CLEs and community forums, and transformed our summer picnic and pool party into a quiz tournament. We addressed a sharp and troubling increase in hate crimes against Asians – driven by a false association between Asians and COVID-19 – by providing information about what type of hate-driven conduct is illegal and how to report incidents and request help. We continued to recognize that racism, especially against our Black community members, is a virus that also must be fought, and pledged to support progress towards the goal of ensuring that Black lives are valued and esteemed in equal measure to all others. We continue to work towards ensuring access to justice, and access to government, including the Census and, of course, the ballot box. We have partnered with many of you in these endeavors, and hope to do much more.
Before I introduce our MC, I want to thank Chi-Ser Tran, Banquet Chair and organizer extraordinaire, and her dedicated committee. She rose to the challenge of formulating a new kind of event. Anything you enjoyed about tonight – tell her! Anything you didn’t like, you can tell me!
