This content was created by Dianne Sanchez Shumway.

This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

2021 Stop Asian Hate

Feng Shen holds up a sign stating “Asians Are not Viruses Racism Is!” in front of candles left out for the eight victims of the Atlanta Mass shooting during the candlelight vigil held in Thousand Oaks, CA. on March 20. 2021. Photo credit: Ryan Bough https://moorparkreporter.com/4016775/news/there-is-no-vaccine-for-racism-ventura-county-asian-american-and-pacific-islander-community-holds-candlelight-vigil-for-atlanta-murder-victims/

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:
3. 2020 - Downfall of the Two Party System The Gazette - So how did the United States settle into a two-party system in contrast to multiparty democracies such as France, Germany and Canada? Historians say the pattern was set in motion two centuries ago with the embrace of winner-take-all elections nationally and locally - that means that coming in second or third place in most elections is worthless. As two major parties emerged and grew in power, third parties found it harder to attract public notice and get their candidates invited to debates or listed on ballots. In addition, voters who supported these candidates but never saw them win eventually drifted away, and third parties found it harder to create enthusiasm, given their likelihood of losing. And that brings us to our current national election. On the Republican side, Donald Trump is seeking a second four-year term as president. The Democrats have Joe Biden, a former vice president, atop their ticket.
4. 2020 Is America's 2-Party System Fracturing?
8. Angela Davis - UCLA hired her to teach in the philosophy department in 1969. After the four-hour LAPD attack on the Black Panther headquarters in South Central (1969), Angela Davis led a protest march to LA city hall and spoke from the front steps.
9. 2021 Assembly Bill 32, a law that took effect last year, mandated that the state could no longer enter or renew contracts with private, for-profit prisons and detention facilities, with some exceptions, by 2028. California tries again to close down privately operated prisons and immigrant detention facilities - CAP Radio by Janelle Salanga: California’s first-of-its-kind ban of privately operated prisons could be back on the table. Assembly Bill 32, a law that took effect last year, mandated that the state could no longer enter or renew contracts with private, for-profit prisons and detention facilities, with some exceptions, by 2028. But last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the law couldn’t be enforced because it would likely interfere with the federal government’s detention of immigrants facing deportation or legal proceedings. Judge Kenneth Lee wrote in his decision that Congress granted the Department of Homeland Security “broad discretion over immigrant detention,” so the law could not stand because it conflicted with that power. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who authored the bill as an Assembly member, filed a petition Wednesday asking the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its 2-1 ruling. “The record is clear: For-profit, private prisons and detention facilities that treat people like commodities pose an unacceptable risk to the health and welfare of Californians,” Bonta said in a statement. GEO Group was the company that filed the suit striking down A.B. 32. CapRadio reached out to GEO Group via email to discuss Bonta’s petition. The attorney general’s office has been tasked with tracking conditions in privately operated detention facilities, as mandated by Assembly Bill 103 passed in 2017. In January, the California Department of Justice released its second report, finding that private facilities now account for 97% of the total beds for immigrant detainees in California, compared to 77% in February 2019. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency still has direct contracts with three groups — MTC, CoreCivic and GEO Group — that are valid for at least five years. Then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra wrote that the Department of Justice saw “deficient conditions of confinement” and insufficient mental health care in the three facilities. “Extremely restrictive conditions for detainees in protective custody and placement of vulnerable detainees with mental health conditions in restrictive housing to the detriment of their mental health … were evident at the three facilities, with female detainees facing especially harsh conditions,” he wrote. In 2019, the Department of Homeland Security released a report that found detainees lived in dangerous, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in ICE and U.S. Border Patrol detention facilities in southern Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. President Joe Biden signed an executive order into law this January that ordered the attorney general to let existing contracts between the Department of Justice and privately operated detention facilities expire. But the executive order doesn’t affect private facilities contracted with ICE. NorCal Resist, a grassroots organization offering legal support for detainees and other services for immigrants, said in a statement that it was pleased to see Bonta defending the ban and called all ICE prisons “inherently inhumane and unsafe.” “Taking the profit motive out of the immigration system in California is a good step in the right direction,” it read. California’s petition for a new hearing asserts that the current ruling doesn’t account for states’ traditionally held power to regulate private entities that affect residents’ health and welfare. Bonta’s petition, which would require the case to be presented before a full bench of judges, is a request seldom granted. The court will not order a rehearing without giving GEO Group an opportunity to express whether it believes one is appropriate.
10. 2021 California plans to be abortion sanctuary if Roe vs. Wade is overturned SACRAMENTO — With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state Legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a “sanctuary” for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states. The California Future of Abortion Council, made up of more than 40 abortion providers and advocacy groups, released a list of 45 recommendations for the state to consider if the high court overturns Roe vs. Wade — the 48-year-old decision that forbids states from outlawing abortion. The recommendations are more than wild ideas. Some of the state’s most important policymakers helped write them, including Toni Atkins, the San Diego Democrat who leads the state Senate and attended multiple meetings. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom started the group himself, and in an interview last week with the Associated Press said some of the report’s details will be included in his budget proposal in January.
11. Restrictive Voting Rights is the New Jim Crow 2021 Protesters gather outside of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta to protest HB 531, which would place tougher restrictions on voting in Georgia, March 1, 2021. The new law has mostly gained attention for its measures to strengthen absentee ballot identification requirements, curtail ballot drop box use and penalize members of the public who offer food and water to voters in line. Months after former Republican President Donald Trump falsely claimed voter fraud in the 2020 elections, Republican backers say Georgia's law is needed to restore confidence in election integrity. Civil rights groups have filed three lawsuits asserting the law illegally restricts voting rights, particularly for minority voters.
12. What Jim Crow looks like in 2021 Protesters gather outside of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta to protest HB 531, which would place tougher restrictions on voting in Georgia, U.S. March 1, 2021. Protesters gather outside of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta to protest HB 531, which would place tougher restrictions on voting in Georgia, U.S. March 1, 2021. Dustin Chamber/Reuters “It’s a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie.” That’s how Stacey Abrams, who spearheaded efforts to organize Black voters in Georgia for the 2020 election, recently described the deluge of new voter restriction laws proposed by Republicans in the Georgia state legislature in the wake of their defeat. Cliff Albright of the Black Voters Matter Fund echoed Abrams, saying the new restrictions, which include new ID requirements and limits on drop boxes, are just “putting a little makeup and cologne on Jim Crow.” Nicole Hemmer Nicole Hemmer The idea that these new voting restrictions are a more sanitized version of Jim Crow says a lot about popular understanding of that era of racism and discrimination (something Abrams and Albright clearly know, and are speaking to). Next to images of White protesters snarling at civil rights activists at sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960 or police officers siccing German Shepherds on Black schoolchildren in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1963, the image of legislators calmly enacting a series of discriminatory restrictions seems far more civilized. Yet, even at its violent peak, Jim Crow had another side, one that always wore a suit and tie, especially when it came to voter disenfranchisement. Required to navigate around the 15th Amendment, which explicitly prohibited barring Black men from voting, White Southern legislators innovated a kind of colorblind racism that would go on to become the right’s preferred tool for opposing civil rights advances in the post-Jim Crow era. Looked at through that lens, the current rush to restrict voting rights is less proof of the resuscitation of Jim Crow than evidence that it never really went away.
13. 2021 After John Lewis dies Democrats renew push for Voting Rights Law
15. 2021 COVID-19 job losses will worsen L.A. homelessness by 2023, new report says
16. 2021 The John Lewis Voting Rights Act
17. 2021 Stop Asian Hate Feng Shen holds up a sign stating “Asians Are not Viruses Racism Is!” in front of candles left out for the eight victims of the Atlanta Mass shooting during the candlelight vigil held in Thousand Oaks, CA. on March 20. 2021. Photo credit: Ryan Bough https://moorparkreporter.com/4016775/news/there-is-no-vaccine-for-racism-ventura-county-asian-american-and-pacific-islander-community-holds-candlelight-vigil-for-atlanta-murder-victims/
18. 2022 Three Strikes
19. 2022 Inglewood Shooting- The Guardian- "Killings in LA spotlight a crisis" ‘Black women are being murdered and no one is paying attention’ - Three recent killings in the Los Angeles area have put the spotlight on the disparate impact of American gun violence on Black women and the lack of attention their stories receive, as the country reckons with some of the most intense spates of gun violence in years. girl holding a sign which reads 'stop gun violence' California city requires gun owners to carry liability insurance in first measure of its kind Read more Both killings took place on weekends, a mere two weeks apart. On 8 January, California officials found the body of Tioni Theus, a 16-year-old girl who was found shot at a busy onramp of the 110 freeway. On 23 January, sisters Breahna Stines and Marneysha Hamilton were among four people shot dead during a mass shooting at a birthday party in Inglewood. Neither incident received much coverage outside of local news, raising questions about which stories are elevated in the national spotlight and which mass shootings grasp the country’s attention. While discrepancies between the attention for white victims of violence and Black victims of violence is nothing new, community organizers and researchers worry about the message this phenomenon continues to send to young Black girls about their worth and potential. “This image of a young Black girl on the side of a highway with cars driving by speaks to the invisibility of Black life,” said Nikki Jones, a professor of African American studies at UC Berkeley. “Black girls are contending with the messages that their life is disposable, and that’s an extremely dangerous message.”
20. 2022 Column: They never thought they’d see a Black president, or another assault on voting rights
21. 2022 The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is Passed. United States federal legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime Beulah Melton, widow of Clinton Melton, talks with civil rights activist Medgar Evers. Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Earlier this month, the Senate unanimously passed legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime. It was a historic moment. Congress has tried and failed to pass anti-lynching legislation more than 200 times over the course of more than a century. According to the NAACP, more than 4700 people were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968. The new Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act – as it’s called – is named for the 14-year-old boy whose murder, 67 years ago, shocked the nation. In 1955, Emmett Till had traveled from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta to visit family when he was kidnapped, beaten, and killed by white men after allegedly flirting with a white woman. His body was later found in the Tallahatchie River. Emmett Til’s death became a media sensation, partly because of a widely distributed photograph of his disfigured face. Today, his murder is considered the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement. But for every Emmett Till, there are many others whose names are lost in time. One of them was a Black gas station attendant who lived just a few miles from where Till was killed.
22. 2022 Woman cries while kneeling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Woman cries while kneeling in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on May 2, 2022. The Supreme Court is poised to strike down the right to abortion in the country, according to a leaked draft of a majority opinion that would shred nearly 50 years of constitutional protections. Credit: Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/overturning-roe-v-wade-could-have-devastating-health-and-financial-impacts-landmark-study-showed/
23. 2022 Roe vs. Wade falls
24. 2022 An abortion rights activist outside the Supreme Court in D.C The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion that was guaranteed nearly 50 years ago by the decision in Roe v. Wade. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was released Friday morning. The justices, voting 6-3 along ideological lines, sided with the Mississippi abortion law that was in question. Reactions were mixed across the country, with anti-abortion-rights supporters celebrating what they view as a victory, and abortion-rights activists expressing their frustration over the decision. Here are some of the scenes from D.C., and across the country. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

This page has tags:

Contents of this tag:
2. Gidra - The Voice of the Asian American Movement Murase, who completed his undergraduate degree in 1970, said he had few opportunities to learn about Asian Americans in the classroom. In response, he and five other UCLA students established Gidra in 1969, a monthly newspaper that highlighted and commented on Asian American issues while also enabling local artists and writers to share their work. Gidra was initially established at Campbell Hall as an Asian American student publication, Murase said. As Gidra’s influence began to extend beyond UCLA following its early publications, Murase said he and his peers moved their operations to a rented office on Jefferson Boulevard – about five and a half miles from UCLA – and accepted submissions from the larger community, including those who lived outside of Los Angeles or were not of Asian descent. Through the work of its volunteer staff and contributors, Gidra produced a total of 60 issues before its closure in 1974, Murase added.
3. 1968 Oakland High School at funeral for Black Panther Bobby Hutton PHOTO BY NIKKI ARAI - Oakland High School students participated in the funeral for Black Panther Bobby Hutton, killed by Oakland Police in 1968. The Black Power movement, led by various groups including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party, emerged in the latter half of the sixties. Coined by Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael, the Black Power movement inspired racial pride and advocated for local community control, self-determination and economic development. At the same time, other social movements challenged the existing social order. At UC Berkeley, students engaged in civil disobedience over a university ban on political activity and initiated the Free Speech movement. The women’s liberation movement emerged in the late ‘60s as organizations formed to confront society’s sexism and to promote women’s equality. Likewise, activists organized the environmental movement to protect the earth, stop pollution, and clean-up toxic environmental hazards in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Each of these movements, as well as their militancy, informed the Asian American movement.
4. 1960s/1970s Health Fair at Castelar Elementary The Movement suffered from misogyny and homophobia. Though perhaps less so than other Third World left groups (e.g. there were fewer instances of physical abuse and assault), women and queer-identified people fought for presence, voice, and their issues. At the same time, the analysis of a “triple oppression” of class, race, and gender for women, and the creation of a multiracial LGBT identity, opened a profound reworking of patriarchal and heterosexual norms. These movements within the Movement are crucial not only to appraising the Asian American Movement, but offer vital case studies for our intersectional present.
5. 1965 Delano Grape Strike, Filipino farm workers
6. 1970s Flier for "The Struggle for National Democracy in the Philippines" This flier advertises an event titled "The Struggle for National Democracy in the Philippines" which was sponsored by the Union of Democratic Filipinos and Liberation Books. A sideshow, songs and discussion are advertised. In this movement, Asian Americans, who had individually become involved with the causes of the times, drew together to address their own racial status and identity. They confronted enduring stereotypes of the unassimilable heathen, the Yellow Peril, and the perpetual foreigner. This generation of students faced the model minority myth, that Asian American students were expected to be hard-working, studious, and quiet even in the face of discrimination. While many sought to assimilate to mainstream Anglo-American cultural norms, they soon recognized that they could not assimilate fully into the white mainstream. The other racial model for Asian Americans was the Black Power movement, which rejected American racism and promoted Black autonomy, racial pride, and community control. For those African American activists, the ideologies of self-determination and cultural nationalism became realized through militant organizations, a flowering of Black arts and expression, and a reclamation of indigenous and ethnic histories. Some of the subsequent Asian American organizations, such as the Red Guard, modeled themselves partially after the Black Panthers, while others were more connected to diasporic movements, such as the Union of Democratic Filipinos, which was also involved in opposing martial law in the Philippines.
7. 1971 Asian Americans not only called for peace in order to bring troops home, but also protested U.S. intervention and imperialism in Vietnam As a newly-formed group identity, Asian American consciousness was rooted in the communities from which they came. Actively seeking to reclaim their histories and to find their own voices, they sought out narratives from their ancestors and elders. They became engaged with their home neighborhoods, creating local programs to “serve the people” and to rally the masses. They also sought to forge solidarities across ethnicity, race, and national boundaries as they identified with other “Third World” peoples. This term recognized the exploitative relations in the global hierarchy where the least developed nations faced oppressive histories and conditions similar to historically marginalized communities in the U.S. Through the practice of supporting one another’s movements and struggles, Asian American students built a collective identity and common cause to address racial injustices. Additionally, Asian American students were deeply influenced by major international developments of the 1960s. The anti-war movement against U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia reached its apex on campuses in early 1968; the success of North Vietnam’s Tet offensive demonstrated that despite the onslaught of U.S. military might, the war could not be easily won. Asian American war protestors realized their paradoxical position. On one hand, they knew they were Americans, but they were being sent to fight an enemy that not only looked like them, but were in a subordinate position in the world order like they found themselves to be within boundaries of their own country
8. 1960s/1970s GIDRA Staff photo Murase, who completed his undergraduate degree in 1970, said he had few opportunities to learn about Asian Americans in the classroom. In response, he and five other UCLA students established Gidra in 1969, a monthly newspaper that highlighted and commented on Asian American issues while also enabling local artists and writers to share their work. Gidra was initially established at Campbell Hall as an Asian American student publication, Murase said. As Gidra’s influence began to extend beyond UCLA following its early publications, Murase said he and his peers moved their operations to a rented office on Jefferson Boulevard – about five and a half miles from UCLA – and accepted submissions from the larger community, including those who lived outside of Los Angeles or were not of Asian descent. Through the work of its volunteer staff and contributors, Gidra produced a total of 60 issues before its closure in 1974, Murase added. Coming of age in the 1960s, Asian American students at universities developed a new, distinct consciousness as Asian Americans shaped by the racial and international context of the time. By 1968, when the Asian American population numbered about 1.3 million, 80 percent of Japanese Americans and about 50 percent of Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans, respectively, were born in the United States. Asian Americans had come to reach the same educational attainment as whites, but still earned substantially less because of racial discrimination. For example, in 1960 Filipinos earned only 61 percent of the income of whites with comparable educations. Japanese and Chinese also earned less than their white counterparts, making 77 percent and 87 percent, respectively. Among the 107,366 Asian American college students on university campuses in 1970, Chinese and Japanese made up the vast majority, with over eight out of ten Asian American students being of either Japanese or Chinese American descent.
9. 2021 Stop Asian Hate Feng Shen holds up a sign stating “Asians Are not Viruses Racism Is!” in front of candles left out for the eight victims of the Atlanta Mass shooting during the candlelight vigil held in Thousand Oaks, CA. on March 20. 2021. Photo credit: Ryan Bough https://moorparkreporter.com/4016775/news/there-is-no-vaccine-for-racism-ventura-county-asian-american-and-pacific-islander-community-holds-candlelight-vigil-for-atlanta-murder-victims/
10. 1960s/1970s Asian American protest Community and Place Mao told his followers to “serve the people,” and Movement activists took the call to heart. In the context of Los Angeles, they found their calling in historic Japanese, Filipino and Chinese American communities. Often neglected by government agencies and limited by language access and social stigma, these neighborhoods needed jobs, health services, and education access. As these younger, college-educated, radicalized Asian Americans worked in the community, they built intergenerational bridges and emphasized the importance of place. Their battles against eviction and redevelopment took on a double urgency: both protecting historical communities and the new Movement centers that shared spaces with them.
11. 1969 Roots and Resources Roots and Resources Founded in 1969 out of a campaign by student activist and faculty allies, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center quickly became a center for resources-gathering and scholarship for the Asian American movement. Asian American student organizations at CSULA, Occidental, USC, and other colleges soon followed. It was a vital hub and training ground for young activists, a place they could earn a salary while doing community work. Roots, the publication which inspired this exhibition’s title, was a course reader published by the UCLA Asian American Studies department in 1971. The editors, many of them young organizers themselves, defined the stakes and reasons for publishing such a volume in the preface: “the lack of appropriate materials in readily accessible form is one of the greatest immediate problems”
13. Asian American Studies and ethnic studies courses Students had to keep fighting for Asian American and ethnic studies courses to be offered every year in the early period of the ethnic studies centers. THE CALL FOR ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES ON WEST COAST CAMPUSES As students became involved with both international and local issues, they began to call for a relevant education that could address these concerns. However, as Irene Dea expressed, they found a system of higher education that largely excluded students of color from admission and whose courses showed little reflection of their histories and experiences. In 1960, California enacted its Master Plan for Education that created a three-tiered college system. The University of California (UC) system was to admit the top 12 percent of the state’s high school students, while the California State University (CSU) system was to accept the top 33 percent. The community colleges were to admit all others. Due to the creation of this stratified system, the percentages of Black students dropped at San Francisco State University from 11 percent in 1960 to only 5.3 percent in 1968. Students of color made up only 17 percent of the university overall. promise to use special admissions for 428 Third World students and shelved a proposal to hire for Black Studies. BSU and TWLF thus initiated a student strike on November 6, 1968 with the BSU making ten demands and TWLF seeking five additional ones, including community control over faculty hiring and curriculum development in the establishment of ethnic studies. In response to these educational disparities, students at SF State were the first to mobilize large numbers of campus and community supporters around demands for an accessible and relevant education. The Black Student Union (BSU), along with the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) organizations, demanded special admissions for underrepresented communities. TWLF included three Asian American student groups: Intercollegiate Chinese of Social Action (ICSA, founded in 1967); Philippine Collegiate Endeavor (PACE, 1967); and Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA, 1968). Each of these groups had already developed community-based projects, such as youth development work in Chinatown, resistance to the I-Hotel evictions in Manilatown, and fighting redevelopment in Japantown. The TWLF organized itself around three goals: special admissions, development of Third World curricula, and hiring of faculty of color. Supporting the BSU and TWLF, members of these groups participated in a sit-in at the campus president’s office in spring 1968, and won the establishment of an Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) office on campus and an increase in special admissions. The next fall semester, however, SF State administrators attempted to remove a lecturer in Black Studies who was an advocate in the Black Power movement. They also broke their
14. 1960s A fight against displacement and to preserve low income housing for the Elderly
15. 1960s/1970s International Hotel in San Francisco
16. 1970 Asian American Women's Movement Activists Although not widely known outside the Asian community or among feminist activists and scholars outside of the Los Angeles area, there was a thriving, militant Asian American women's movement in southern California starting in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Like other movements among feminists of color, it both grew out of and remained tied to the larger national/ethnic movement and the anti-war movement. Asian American consciousness and activism most often developed on college campuses and, ultimately, often led to the development of Asian American studies. The core women activists in the Los Angeles area, however, focused most of their political work and organizing in grass roots community programs, and looked to Chinese and Vietnamese women revolutionaries for their inspiration. Many of them were members of the Community Workers Collective, which engaged in studying political liberation movements in other countries as a basis for their community organizing. Based on their study and organizing experience, the Asian Women's Group developed one of the first multi-media interactive presentations on the Asian women's movement which was performed at venues along the West Coast. They also founded the first Asian Women's Center in the US, establishing principles of unity to guide their programs; and collectivized their salaries to generate more staff and programs. They collaborated in anti-Vietnam War activities, and used their resources to support other struggles such as Wounded Knee. Despite ongoing struggles with the men in the larger Asian American movement, these women activists remained committed to and involved in the broader movement and eschewed separatism. The Asian American activists included in this series include: May Ying Chen, Miya Iwataki and Evelyn Yoshimura. An additional interview with long-time Asian American male activist, Alan Nishio, sheds further light both on the activities of the women and on the relationship between them and the broader Asian American movement in Los Angeles.
18. 1965 Protesting apart of the Delano Grape strike “The Delano Grape Strike began on September 8, 1965, in protest to substandard wages being paid to predominantly Filipino farm workers of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee. A week later, they were joined by the Mexican-American National Farmworkers Association, led by prominent labor leader Cesar Chavez, his elder brother Richard, and Dolores Huerta. Less than a year later, the two organizations merged to form the United Farm Workers – and more than 2,000 workers had joined the fight. Ultimately, the strike spread across North America and even Western Europe as consumers supported the workers by boycotting non-union grapes”
19. 1995 SPARC Neighborhood Pride Mural Program Sponsored Mural located on 1660 Beverly Boulevard at Unidad Park, Sponsored by SPARC’s Neighborhood Pride Mural Program in 1995. On September 8th, 1965, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a majority Filipino labor group, initiated a strike against Delano grape growers amidst cries of “welga!” (the Tagalog word for “strike”). The purpose of the strike was to get union contracts, higher pay, and improved working conditions.
20. 1972 Filipino Farm Workers gather to plan the construction of Agbayani Village Filipino union members played key roles in the farmworker movement. Most of these men, respectfully known as Manongs, migrated to the United States in their teens and 20s. Racist laws in California at that time forbade them from marrying outside their race, so most remained single. Evicted from farm labor camps after joining the Delano Grape Strike in 1965, by the end of the strike in 1970 many Filipino men were without families, pensions, and places to live. In 1973 and 1974, the farm worker movement built the Paulo Agbayani Retirement Village. It provided some of Manongs with safe and comfortable housing, human dignity and respect in their final years. Hundreds of volunteer laborers constructed this complex. The village was named after a Filipino Manong who died of a heart attack on the picket line. The village provided residents with individual rooms, a community kitchen serving Filipino cuisine, a dining hall, living and recreation room, and garden. As the first affordable housing community built by what is now the Cesar Chavez Foundation, Agbayani Village served as a model for dozens of properties built across four states that continue providing affordable housing. The Chavez Foundation manages the property today, which still houses people.
21. 1960s Photo of Philip Vera Cruz 2 “In the words of Philip Vera Cruz: ‘On September 8, 1965, at the Filipino Hall at 1457 Glenwood St. in Delano, the Filipino members of AWOC held a mass meeting to discuss and decide whether to strike or to accept the reduced wages proposed by the growers. The decision was "to strike" and it became one of the most significant and famous decisions ever made in the entire history of the farmworker struggles in California. It was like an incendiary bomb, exploding out the strike message to the workers in the vineyards, telling them to have sit-ins in the labor camps, and set up picket lines at every grower's ranch... It was this strike that eventually made the UFW, the farmworkers movement, and Cesar Chavez famous worldwide.’”
22. 1960s Photo of Philip Vera Cruz “He was one of the co-founders of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a labor union that later joined the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to become what is known today as the United Farm Workers (UFW). During his years with AWOC, Philip and the other leaders made the decision to start Delano Grape Strike which was one of the most significant and well known strikes in the history of farmworker struggle in California. This strike is what eventually made the UFW. Philip Vera Cruz was the long standing second Vice President of the UFW until he retired in in 1997.”
23. 1939 Filipino farm workers Filipino farm workers in Pajaro Valley, near Watsonville, California. The first generation of Filipino trade unionists became leaders in the multiracial organizing of migratory workers in the agricultural sector and the salmon canning industry from the 1920s through the 1960s. Larry Itliong, Philip Vera Cruz, Chris Mensalves, Sr. and Pete Velasco were the leaders who helped to form the Alaska Cannery Workers Union Local 37, now affiliated with the Inlandboatmen’s Union and the United Farm Workers.
24. 1965 Larry Itliong leads Filipino Farm Workers Larry Itliong & other Filipino leaders of Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) approached NFWA to participate in strike against major grape growers of the Central Valley. Filipino farmwohe Delano Grape Strike. Born in the Philippines, Itliong immigrated to the U.S in 1929, hoping to become a lawyer. Instead, he ended up working in the Alaskan fish canneries and along the West Coast as a farm laborer. During that time, he experienced how badly laborers were treated and saw the power they could gain by working together. He became an activist and organizer. Following his service in the U.S. Army during World War II, Itliong became a U.S citizen and in 1954 moved to Stockton’s Little Manila, where he organized for the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC). He was so good at recruiting new members that union leaders asked him to move to Delano to organize Filipino grape workers. It was there that he helped change the history of farm labor. On Sept. 8, 1965, he led AWOC members in walking off the grape vineyards to demand wages equal to federal minimum wage and better working conditions. But Itliong knew that for the strike to succeed, they needed members of the National Farm Workers Association to join. He approached NFWA’s leader, César Chávez, with the proposal. On Sept. 16, the AWOC and NFWA joined forces beginning the Delano Grape Strike and Boycott. It lasted five years and was one of the most important social justice and labor movements in American history, ending with victory for the farmworkers. In the meantime, the AWOC and NFWA merged in 1966 to become the United Farm Workers (UFW), with Chávez as director and Itliong as assistant director. In 1971, Itliong left the UFW but continued to work for Filipino Americans until his death in 1977 at age 63. One of his major successes was securing funding for the construction of the Paulo Agbayani Retirement Village in Delano, which has provided housing and support for retired Filipino farmworkers since 1974.
25. 1960s Asian migrants to the United States (Stand in picture for the moment) The earliest Asian migrants to the United States were predominantly Chinese, Japanese and Filipino, but following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished a quota system that had limited immigration from non-western European countries, the Asian American population not only grew — it diversified. Prof. Ronald Takaki, who was a professor of Asian American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in “Strangers from a Different Shore” that there were one million people of Asian descent living in the U.S. in 1965. By 1985, this number jumped to five million, or two percent of the entire U.S. population. Prior to the new immigration law, 99 percent of Asian Americans were Chinese, Japanese or Filipino, but by 1985, 12 percent of Asian Americans were Vietnamese, 11 percent Korean and 10 percent Indian. The 1965 Immigration Act ended various exclusionary immigration policies. It also set up a system of preference that favored skilled workers and the families of American citizens. This landmark piece of legislation facilitated massive new waves of Asian migration. New communities arose, such as Los Angeles’ Koreatown, and the Sikh community in Yuba City, whose temple is pictured here. As Asian migrants with more capital arrived, “suburban Chinatowns” such as Monterey Park grew.
26. 1970s/1980s Location shoot in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park for Visual Communications The roots of Asian American studies and its flourishing as a field of study has borne fruit, evidenced by the accomplishments of its students, a growing diversity in the curriculum, and the strength of local Asian American community institutions. For the students, Asian American studies validated their identities as Asians in America. It allowed them to explore a common history and cause with fellow Asians. And it offered a space to develop solidarities within and across racial, ethnic, gender and other boundaries. Asian American studies was a hotbed where students could grow in their activism and leadership. On university campuses, Asian American studies institutionalized community-based learning and research that re-envisioned the role of the university. Finally, the Asian American community as a whole benefited, as students went on to apply their skills and experiences to establish needed community programs and services as well as local and national organizations. They also entered mainstream institutions and advocated on behalf of those whose voices were missing.
27. 1960s/1970s Student protesting for Asian Studies classes Students had to keep fighting for Asian American and ethnic studies courses to be offered every year in the early period of the ethnic studies centers.After the TWLF strikes at SF State and UC Berkeley and the creation of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, the struggle to establish Asian American studies continued as students sought to develop the curriculum that was relevant to their communities
28. 1968 SFSU Mass Strike Called THE CALL FOR ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES ON WEST COAST CAMPUSES, As students became involved with both international and local issues, they began to call for a relevant education that could address these concerns. However, as Irene Dea expressed, they found a system of higher education that largely excluded students of color from admission and whose courses showed little reflection of their histories and experiences
29. 1960s Sacramento Assembly Center, which held nearly 5,000 Japanese Americans from the Sacramento area in 1942 prior to their transfer to Tule Lake concentration camp in northern California. World War II exposed the blatant hypocrisy of American democracy and its institutional racism when the U.S. government incarcerated over 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry in concentration camps. Over six in ten internees were U.S.-born citizens, who were incarcerated for about four years under the suspicion of espionage and fear of their disloyalty. Not until 1988, after Japanese Americans lobbied for redress and reparations, did the U.S. government apologize for unjustly incarcerating its own citizens. In the decade after World War II, Asian Americans remained scarred by the internment and by the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era. Consequently, the U.S.-born generations of Asians, who grew up attending American public schools, generally felt pressure to integrate into American society by acculturating and assimilating.
31. 1969 Gidra Article
32. 1971 Anti-War demonstration on Wilshire Blvd Politicized by War For many young Asian Americans in the 1960s, the War in Vietnam was a brutal and urgent politicization. Watching the war unfold on the nightly news, a common sentiment was that America “killing people who looked like us.” Unlike the mainstream anti-war movement, many Asian Americans saw the Vietnam War as genocidal, or at least imperialist. They placed the war within the larger history of anti-Asian racism in America and imperialist expansion into the Third World.
34. 1960s/1970s GIDRA sisters
35. 1971“Liberation,” January 1971 issue of Gidra Though Gidra included women on its staff and women’s issues in its pages, a series of “rap sessions” led to a special women’s issue in 1971 with the word “Liberation” and a large Venus symbol on the cover. The issue linked international questions to those at home, from war brides and G.I.s to struggles of women within the Asian American Movement. The focus on the global and the local was also present in the popular International Women’s Day celebrations. Beginning in 1974, the festival united many of the different Movement groups in a common recognition of women’s struggles.
36. 1970s Asian American Protest police brutality and racial Profiling
37. 1968/1980s Activists in Little Tokyo protest against neighborhood redevelopment and the displacement of residents. It is one of the items on display in the new Chinese American Museum exhibit Roots: Asian American Movements in Los Angeles “Hell no, we won’t go!” In the early 1970s, Little Tokyo was marked as a blighted area by the L.A. Master Plan, and the landmark Sun Building was to be torn down and replaced with a luxury hotel. The Sun Building housed the Japanese American Community Services, Asian Involvement Office (or JACS-AI, a more youth- and movement-focused wing of the older service organization), elderly Latino residents, Japanese cultural spaces, and small businesses. In 1973, the Little Tokyo Anti-Eviction Task Force formed to combat the evictions. It disbanded a couple years later, and was replaced by the Little Tokyo People’s Rights Organization (LTPRO). The LTPRO waged a multi-year battle of fundraising, demonstrations, community outreach, and Nisei Week outreach. They demanded the construction of a Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (JACCC), jobs for Japanese workers, and senior housing. In 1976, residents of the Sun Building were finally evicted. In a pyrrhic victory, the LTPRO and organizing was able to secure the Little Tokyo Service Center, founded in 1979, and funding for the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, which opened its doors in 1980. Many of those activists also went on to found the National Coalition for Redress/Reparations, which called upon the U.S. government to recognize the legacy of internment.
38. 1973 three young activists in New York City recorded A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle by Asians in America The Movement marked the first time Asian people collectively owned and created their own images in this country. It was no small feat: young artists had to cut against the stereotypes and caricatures they had been fed since youth. These lines from “We Are the Children” on the seminal album A Grain of Sand capture this tension: Foster children of the Pepsi generation Cowboys and Indians ride, red man, ride! Watching war movies with the next-door neighbor Secretly rooting for the other side Culture—musical, visual, written, performed—was a way to exorcise and subvert dominant American narratives. It infused the new identity of Asian America with anti-imperialist and multiethnic critiques. The verse above both names a dominant paradigm then re-appropriates the image of the heroic cowboy and soldier by actually identifying with the ‘villain’—in this case, the indigenous and Asian combatants.
39. 1972 JoAnne/Nobuko Miyamoto and Chris Iijima perform at the Third World Storefront organization Art and Communication The Movement marked the first time Asian people collectively owned and created their own images in this country. Culture—musical, visual, written, performed—was a way to exorcise and subvert dominant American narratives. Young artists had to cut against the stereotypes and caricatures they had been fed since youth. Art was “for the people”: and there was little differentiation between it and activism, and it infused the new identity of Asian America with anti-imperialist and multiethnic critiques. Los Angeles became home to the first Asian American films ever made. Community-based and politically-charged, they showed Asian struggles, families, and histories in a way Hollywood never imagined. A plethora of newspapers got out the word. From personal essays to reports on U.S. militarism and Asian communities, the concerns and goals of the Movement took shape in those worn and circulated pages.
40. 1970 - Marching for peace-rally through through the streets of Little Tokyo For many young Asian Americans in the 1960s, the War in Vietnam was a brutal and urgent politicization. Watching the war unfold on the nightly news, a common sentiment was that America “killing people who looked like us.” Unlike the mainstream anti-war movement, many Asian Americans saw the Vietnam War as genocidal, or at least imperialist. They placed the war within the larger history of anti-Asian racism in America and imperialist expansion into the Third World. In 1969, Asians Americans for Peace was founded in Los Angeles. Groups like the Thai Binh and Van Troi Brigades (named after Vietnamese freedom fighters) formed to mobilize youth. Meanwhile, Asian Movement for Military Outreach