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Great job, Barbara. You have an incredible amount of research here and your use of the arrows to illustrate the connections you make throughout the Padlet clearly shows me your thought/research process.

Please let me know if you have any questions or  concerns going forward.  Right now, your focus on Asian American activism works well.

One piece of advice I will give is (and perhaps you are already doing this):
As you write, you can help your transitions from each body paragraph to the next by writing about the events in chronological order, starting with 1965 Voting Rights and then the events that came after it.  This way you can educate your reader on how the different events helped influence the ones that came after.  It seems like all activism emerged after this importing Voting Rights Act.  This might be something that you want to spend sometime explaining in your essay

Thesis:3/3
Intro.: 4/4
Body Parag.: 14/15
Counter arg:  4/4
Concl.: 4/4

29/30

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Asian Americans established their first newspaper and magazine

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In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Asian American women activists preferred to join forces with Asian American men in the struggle against racism and classicism...some Asian American women felt that the feminist movement was not attacking racial and class problems of central concern to them. They wanted to work with groups that advocated improved conditions for people of their own racial and ethnic background or people of color, rather than groups oriented toward women's issues
...Asian American women have recognized that these organizations have not been particularly responsive to their needs and concerns as women. They also protested that their intense involvement did not and will not result i equal participation as long as the tradition dominance by men and the gendered division of labor remain. Their protests have sensitized some men and have resulted in changes of attitudes and treatment of of women, but other Asians, both women and men, perceived them as moving toward separatism.

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combat sexism and racism, to achieve social equality and justice in society, and to increase the social participation of women at members believe that once the class struggle is over, sexism and racism will be resolved.

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They did research to analyze the circumstances and events causing the subordinate position of women, explored new ways of thinking to alter or revolutionize the social condition of Asian American Women, and sought collective actions to end all forms of oppression including sexism.

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Since the late 1960s, several Asian American Women's groups have been established in local communities across the country. Theses include women's courses sponsored by college-level; Asian American studies programs, community education programs, social service programs, women's union, physical and mental health projects, and political interest groups

Contrary to the common belief about the passivity of Asian American women, they tend to be actively involved in women's group s of their respective backgrounds and in Asian groups than in white feminist organizations. Many of them are organized at the regional level and re in the process of expanding their influence and building networks from grassroots level to a national one. For example, the Organization of Chinese American Women is nationally based, with over one thousand members throughout the United States. And the National Network of Asian and Pacific Women consists o many regional groups working to build a visible political force.
...Many participants i the radical groups joined the civil rights movement in the 1960s

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he 1960s marked an overhaul of the way America perceived race relations and politics, with the civil rights movement dissecting and questioning issues of racial segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, voter disenfranchisement, hate crimes and employment discrimination. While this movement was led by African American civil rights groups, it also inspired Asian Americans to take action in their struggle for equality in the eyes of society. The period was a turning point in that many young Asian Americans began to actualize their identity as Americans and speak out as an organized group with multi-ethnic roots. The 1960s were also a time of legislative change for Asian Americans, during which the government finally eased laws restricting immigration and opened its doors to new Asian immigrants.

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In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. For the first time, Federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities.

The Chinese Exclusion Act required the few nonlaborers who sought entry to obtain certification from the Chinese government that they were qualified to immigrate. But this group found it increasingly difficult to prove that they were not laborers because the 1882 act defined excludables as “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining.” Thus very few Chinese could enter the country under the 1882 law.

The 1882 exclusion act also placed new requirements on Chinese who had already entered the country. If they left the United States, they had to obtain certifications to re-enter. Congress, moreover, refused State and Federal courts the right to grant citizenship to Chinese resident aliens, although these courts could still deport them.

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The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. It completely excluded immigrants from Asia.

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Previous to World War II, the Asian Americans communities had accumulated a storehouse of grievances. The larger U.S. society perceived Asian as perpetual foreigners. They were brutally attacked in the nineteenth century, discriminated against in almost all aspect of their lives.

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Asian American communities were struggling out of century long environment of racial segregation, deprivation, exploitation, and political repression. Through the war, few social service agencies beyond the local churches or temples addresses the needs of the population in these enclaves, and public institutions overlooked the customary services accorded other communities in the U.S.society

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Bridge Magazine was the first Asian American periodical in magazine format. It begin in 1971 as a publication of Basement Workshop. Unlike most other movement publications, Bridge was created through the skills of professional journalists like Frank Ching, a former editor with the New York Times and later chief of the Wall Street Journal's Being bureau...Like Gidra and other publications of the times, the issue of Bridge are now mini time capsules preserving historic caches of artifacts and information that chronicle Asian America in the making.

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Other newspapers and magazines/increasing number

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Other newspapers and magazines/increasing number

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In 1965 there were only a handful of dissident newspaper, but four years later-driven by dissatisfaction with mainstream media, and made possible by the new technology of offset printing-the count was 150 and rising

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Los Angeles Free Press(1964-78)'s headline)(Primary Source)

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Los Angeles Free Press(1964-78)'s headline)(Primary Source)

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"Yellow Power Arrives!"
(Front page of the October 31- November 6, 1969 issue)
About LAFP:

was the frst and most successful alternative newspaper of the Long Sixties. Having reached a circulation of 100,000 with a readership estimated to be double that number.

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contributed to the formation of political identities that gave rise to a generational cohort of activities and cultural workers

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The activities of activism the Asian American joined demande changes in the society. Asian American finally can express their voice in the political alliance they established, newspapers and magazines.The lau v. Nicolas Act ended the racial discrimination in the U.S. education; while Asian American women joined together to also end racism and sexism. Although the U.S didn’t grant Asian American full citizenship before, the Asian American fought for their own voting rights and finally have the right to vote. The 1969 moratorium didn’t immediately end the Vietnam war, but the opinions of Asian American impacted the U.S to end the war in the future. As a whole, the Asian American Movement changed the perception of the U.S society to Asian American, and the society finally began to accept the diversity of this country by giving them equal rights and opportunities.

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The Asian American Movement increased the presence of Asian Americans because not only their voice could be heard by the public in the newspaper or magazines, but also their actions against racism influenced the Congress and the society to change.

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Asian Americans shifted from American born citizens to largely foreign born immigrants because of the mass immigrations. The U.S society discriminated and perceived Asian American as perpetual foreigners. The racial segregation, and political repression isolated them from the society because the society discriminated against them in almost all aspect of their life. The Chinese exclusion act of 1882 passed by Congress, refused to grant Chinese full citizenship and provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. Later, the Immigration Act of 1924 completely excluded Asian immigrants. In the 1960s, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Korean compromised 80 percent of Asian American population. They usually worked in service occupations-clerical, food, laundry service, garment production, crafts, and agriculture.During the 1960s to 1970s, as the population of Asian American kept growing, Asian Americans decided to  fought against the racial discrimination they faced in order to demande changes in the society. They started the Asian American Movement, a significant social movement consisted of activism for racial justice. In the movement, they participated various activities in order to resist racism, fight for their rights and equality. In 1968, Yuji Ichioka, a Japanese American founded Asian American Political Alliance that further impacted Asian American to express their opinion in the public and established Asian American newspaper and magazines. Chinese American started Lau v. Nicolas act that promote Congress to pass the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. Asian American Women also took action to end oppression. The rapid growth of Asian American population caused Congress to pass the Voting Right Act of 1965. They joined anti-Vietnam war protest and started 1969 moratorium.

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Despite the fact that the Asian Americans associated with each other in the 1969 moratorium, the moratorium did not immediately stopped the conflict between the society and the Asian Americans.

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Asian Americans protested against the Vietnam war and joined together in the 1969 moratorium to end the war.

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Although Asian American struggled for equality, the Voting right Act of 1965 provided them the right to vote

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Asian American Women actively involved in actions of ending sexism and racism

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The lau v. Nicolas Act provided Asian American an opportunity of equal education

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The establishment of Asian American Political Alliance allowed many Asian American s to recognize their own identity and had impact on newspapers

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In 1972, at a time when alternative presses were rarely taken seriously by the mainstream, Gidra Caught the attention of the Library Journal, the oldest and largest trade publication for librarians, which wrote that Gidra "effectively voices this new consciousness among Amerasian, Simultaneously uncovering a century of wrongs committed by the white majority and enunciating a determination to make the future at once different and better than the past"(63)

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Gidra gained a national readership  and inspired the birth of man other movement newspapers

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Asian American students coalesced at the University  of California, Berkeley, Asian American students began organizing sister campus in Los Angeles. Along with developing UCLA's Asian American Studies Center, the inaugural center of this new academic discipline , many of the same undergraduates launched Gidra: The Monthly of the Asian American Experience, the inaugural newspaper of the Asian American Movement.Published between April 1969 and April 1974, during the primal years of Asian America, it not only provided alternative news, it served as a national forum for vetting alternative ideas.

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AAPA newsletters quickly circulated to other colleges campuses, and other formation of the same name appeared throughout the country although they were not considered chapters of the original organization

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"AAPA is only a transition for developing our own social identity...In fact, [the important link is not] AAPAitself...but the idea generated into action from it"

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With the power of repetition, AAPA was first organization to articulate the ideology of this New Man and Woman:
We Asian American believe that we must develop an American Society that is just , humane, equal...

We Asian American realize that America was always and still is a White Racist Society...

We Asian American refuse t cooperate with the White Racism in this society...

We Asian American support all opressed peoples...

We Asian American oppose the imperialistic policies being pursued by American government.

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The formation of the Asian American Political Alliance at the University of California, Berkeley...Coined by AAPA's Founder Yuji Ichioka, the self-identifier "Asian American" marked a seismic shift in consciousness. More than just a descriptor, the term subverted the Orientalist tradition of lumping all Asian together-his time as an oppositional political identity imbued with self-definition and empowerment, signaling a new way of thinking.

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AAPA and its impact of establishing newspaper

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AAPA and its impact of establishing newspaper

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Asian Americans likewise experienced gains and losses in civil rights. The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 permitted Japanese immigrants to become citizens but contained restrictive quotas based on race and country of origin. Chinese Americans, especially during the McCarthy era, found themselves targets of suspicion and possible deportation following the Communist takeover of China. During this period, however, Asian Americans began their own social, cultural, and political initiatives to challenge the status quo and advance their civil rights.

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The Advancement Act rightfully recognizes that our country's changing demographics - which includes the rapidly growing Asian American population - require tools to protect voters and ensure any changes to voting laws be public and transparent,...The Voting Rights Act, if restored, can help ensure that Asian Americans can vote free from discrimination and be able to influence elections in the future."

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Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act directly forbids racial discrimination. Section 2 prohibits the use of any “standard, practice, or procedure” that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizens of the United States to vote on account of race or color.

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Many legal scholars consider the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to be the single most important statute (law enacted by Congress) passed in the twentieth century. The Voting Rights Act was designed to prevent state and local governments—primarily in Southern states—from using racially discriminatory tools to prevent African Americans and other racial minorities from voting. The act has been an overwhelming success and remains in force in the twenty-first century.

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"Voting rights and accessing the ballot is a critical concern for the Asian American community. But without the VRA, many Asian Americans wouldn't be able to vote," said Mee Moua, president and executive director of Advancing Justice | AAJC. "Most Asians weren't able to naturalize and become U.S. citizens until 1952, meaning they couldn't vote. Since then, Asian Americans have often been questioned about their citizenship as an added hurdle to accessing the ballot box. In addition, almost half of Asian American adults are limited English proficient, and without language assistance at the polls, would be unable to cast their ballot."

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Voting rights act amendments in 1982, however, made it possible for minority plaintiffs to challenge any jurisdiction for engaging in electoral discrimination if election results showed that the number of minority candidates elected were not commensurate with the overall population proportions in a city, county, or larger political jurisdiction. The U.S. Justice Department became more of a jurisdictional "watchdog," employing staff to monitor redistricting plans throughout the country (Fuchs 1990). Court decisions have bolstered the strength of minority challenges to political districting process. In 1986, the Thornburgh v. Gingles Supreme Court decision ruled that it was "illegal for a state or locality with racial bloc voting not to create a district in which minorities are in the majority if such a district can be created" (

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Areas of concentrated minority population are frequently split-up in separate districts. District boundaries disadvantageous to racial minorities Civil Rights and Asian Americans 21 were historically the consequence of "gerrymandering" on the part of white political candidates who preserved their electorability by perpetuating the same political district boundaries from year to year.

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Voting right excluded the ones who can't speak English

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Voting right excluded the ones who can't speak English

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In the area of voting rights, multilingual balloting is important issue to Asian Americans, since many potential voters in this group are of limited English proficiency (LEP). Latino voters have been unproblematic beneficiaries of the Voting Rights Act amendments of 1975, which required that political districts with more than 5% language minorities provide multilingual balloting. Asian American populations sometimes fell short of the 5% cutoff, however, particularly in large cities (there were almost 100,000 Chinese Americans of voting-age in New York City in 1980, for instance, but this accounted for less than 5% of the total metropolitan population). This problem was resolved in 1992, when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was given another 15-year extension with a new amendment which mandated bilingual balloting in districts with at least 10,000 minority LEP voters (in addition to districts that meet the 5% benchmark)

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Asian woman fight against soldier in vietnam war

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Asian woman fight against soldier in vietnam war

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they also had not experienced the divisions between Asian American groups that occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In fact, the wider society’s tendency to lump all Asian Americans together forced them to associate with each other. During the Vietnam War (1957–1975) Asians and Asian Americans faced bias and hostility, whether they were of Vietnamese descent or not, and without regard to their actual political affiliations.

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Asian Women/ Anti -war movement/sterotypes

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Asian Women/ Anti -war movement/sterotypes

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Asian American women recognized racist attitudes about Asian women as cheap hookers, exotic geisha girls, and communist spies because those same stereotypes had been weaponized to ban their immigrant grandmothers and call for the forced sterilization of their mothers in WWII concentration camps. They identified with the women of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia not only as Asians fighting Western imperialism, but as women living at the intersections of racism and sexism. Asian Americans worked to amplify the voices of women who had witnessed the effects of U.S. military aggression in their home countries, meeting with Vietnamese political activists and touring the country to educate Americans about the war and the people impacted by it.25

Even as they encountered pushback from “Movement guys” unwilling to acknowledge their own role in perpetuating misogyny and white feminists who refused to accept their complicity in racism against women of color, Asian American women opened space for transnational coalitions with their Asian “sisters” and took on important leadership positions within the anti-war movement.

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Aftermath/Nixon's withdrawal of troops later

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Aftermath/Nixon's withdrawal of troops later

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The mainstream peace movement began to dissipate as the Nixon administration implemented its “Vietnamization” policy in the early 1970s. By reducing the number of U.S. ground troops in Vietnam while shifting the burden of combat to South Vietnamese forces, American casualties began to decline. For those whose primary objective had been to bring back the troops, there was no longer much to protest.

But withdrawing combat troops (while simultaneously increasing airstrikes and continuing political interference throughout Southeast Asia) did nothing to address “the reality that the worst thing about the war is that Asian people are being uprooted and murdered daily.”¹⁰ For many Asian Americans, the lack of public outcry over the rising death toll for Vietnamese soldiers and civilians—not to mention the “secret war” in Cambodia and Laos—reflected the white anti-war movement’s disregard for Asian lives and freedoms.

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The Moratorium did not immediately stop the conflict, and data simply does not exist to indicate whether the protest changed hearts or minds. The Moratorium organizers clashed among themselves over money and dates and messaging for future demonstrations. Exhaustion and frustration led to more infighting. The coalition between anti-Vietnam War liberals and radical (at points militant) pacifists dissolved. A withdrawal from Vietnam was not negotiated for three more years; a full withdrawal not for another six.

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15 Republican congressmen assembled to demand an intensification of the war effort, and conservative counterprotesters marched with signs that read "America, Love It Or Leave IT."

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Counter argument of their protest of the Vietnam war

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Counter argument of their protest of the Vietnam war

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The organizers had labored to shore up political support to demonstrate the breadth of their movement. The evening before the Moratorium, 23 members of Congress convened under the Capitol dome for a night's worth of speeches against the war - the longest stretch of antiwar congressional speechmaking to that point.

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A hundred thousand gathered in the Boston Common to hear Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., speak as a skywriter sketched out the peace sign above them. Another 100,000 converged on Bryant Park in New York, where New York Republican Sens. Charles Goodell and Jacob Javits and Mayor John Lindsay participated. In the nation's capital, Coretta Scott King greeted 50,000 protesters in front of the Washington Monument as hundreds of thousands more converged to fill the Mall to capacity. The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, the successor to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led a march in Los Angeles.

And the Moratorium did not stop at the edge of the metropolises. In East Meadow, Long Island, the longtime ambassador and statesman W. Averell Harriman spoke to a crowd of 15,000. Six inches of snow could not deter 3,000 in Denver. The tally was 11,000 in rural Iowa. Nuclear scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory halted their atomic research.

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Moratorium committee was determined to stay mainstream and to work within the system for political change. By collecting endorsements from groups big and small - from the United Auto Workers to the National Council of Churches, and even corporations such as Midas Inc. - the organizers brought women and men of all ages and from all walks of life into the student movement. Their goal: to win the rhetorical battle and transform public perceptions of the Vietnam War from a "noble cause" to an "immoral war."

On the day of the demonstration, protesters wore black armbands to mourn the war's dead. And just as "We Shall Overcome" had been the hymn of the civil rights movement, they sang John Lennon's new hit, "Give Peace a Chance," as the day's anthem.

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The Vietnam Moratorium Committee was headed mostly by young veterans of Eugene McCarthy's 1968 campaign for the presidency. They aimed to channel the nation's discontent surrounding the war into mass protest, following the example set by civil rights leaders. Their message was simple: End the war.

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On Oct. 15, 1969, in 10,000 high schools across the United States, students skipped classes to demand a halt to the Vietnam War. The mass demonstration, dubbed the Moratorium, was "a march against death." Protesting a war that seemed all but lost, yet still cost more than $2 billion each month, activists called for a nationwide general strike to stop "business as usual."

Streets filled with rallies and prayer vigils. Church bells tolled and workers struck. Municipal buildings were draped in black crepe, and American flags flew at half-staff. The best estimate was that 2 million Americans demonstrated that day. Life magazine judged the protest "the largest expression of public dissent ever seen in this country."

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 1973 demonstration led by the National Peace Action Coalition

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 1973 demonstration led by the National Peace Action Coalition

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At a January 1973 demonstration led by the National Peace Action Coalition, the Los Angeles Asian Coalition walked out in protest of “the racism and paternalism that exists within the white anti-war movement.” Soon after, they called for a boycott of future NPAC-sponsored events over its refusal to confront their “white skin privilege” and broaden their message beyond concern for American lives.⁹

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At rallies like the 1969 moratoria and the famous April 24, 1971 March on Washington, demonstrators marched in separate Asian contingents carrying bilingual signs and chanting slogans that clearly articulated the war’s racial overtones: “Stop killing our Asian sisters!” “End your racist war!” “Asia for Asians!” During an international women’s conference in April 1971, white feminists were excluded from some meetings after referring to the Vietnamese and Lao delegates as “our little Indochinese sisters” and “show[ing] overt resentment” to discussions of race and class

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Activists young and old had long organized against discrimination at home, but Vietnam globalized the movement and helped to unify different ethnic Asian groups under a common cause. Violence in Southeast Asia—linked to historical atrocities in the Philippines, Korea, Japan, and Okinawa—gave Asian Americans the language to talk about their own experiences here in the United States. Centuries of Western colonization and exploitation in Asia was responsible not only for the war against their “cousins” in Southeast Asia, but for the diasporas that brought their immigrant ancestors to America, for the inherited trauma of state-sanctioned violence at Manzanar and Rock Springs, for the “dehumanizing conditions in our Asian communities, barrios, black ghettos and reservations.”³

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Opposition to the Vietnam War was a key component of the Asian American Movement, and grew out of the same groundswell of activism that resulted in the birth of Asian American Studies, the Asian American women’s movement, and redress for the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans. As Karen L. Ishizuka notes in her study of “the Movement”: “It was no accident that Asian America was born at the peak of the Vietnam War.”¹

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 Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 

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 Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 

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The decision was subsequently followed by the passing of Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 in Congress, which specifically prohibited discrimination against faculty and student in public schools and required the school districts to take "appropriate action" to overcome the barriers to equal participation of all students.[8] It increased funding to the Bilingual Education Act and made additional English instruction mandatory, which effectively extended the Lau ruling to all public schools

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Lau is not the only source of federal legal protection for English language learners. If alternative provisions offer ample protection, Lau's undoing would not seriously jeopardize students' rights. The Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA),''^ the First Amendment''* guarantee of free speech, and the English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement Act"^ (hereinafter the English Language Acquisition Act) are the most promising possibilities for replacing Lau\ Title VI disparate impact regime

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Congress must limit itself to prohibiting intentional discrimination, just as the Constitution does. So far, the Court has avoided a direct confrontation with Congress over the scope of its authority to recognize disparate impact claims as a means to combat racial and ethnic discrimination. Instead, the Court has honed arguments about the limits of congressional power in areas less central to the Amendment's original aim of dismantling the legacy of slavery.

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Congress had the power to prohibit behavior that does not necessarily amount to a constitutional violation." The Constitution prohibits intentional wrongs but does not reach actions taken in good faith that have a racially adverse effect.^" Even so, under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress has been empowered to rectify inequality by recognizing disparate impact claims.^' Second, Congress exercised this power when enacting Title VI of the Civil Rights Act; that is, the statute reaches not just intentional discrimination but also acts with an adverse effect.^ ....
in light of this history of congressional action and agency interpretation, the school district's exclusive reliance on English-language instruction wrongfully excluded non-English-speaking children from access to the curriculum in violation of Title VI

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the San Francisco school district had agreed to abide by OCR's requirements when it accepted federal funds."' The Court did not determine whether the San Francisco school system had denied the students equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, nor did the Justices order any specific remedy." Instead, the Justices urged the school district to apply its expertise to devise appropriate accommodations for the Chinese-speaking students.'* Because there was no finding that the district's actions were motivated by animus, the Court presumably remained optimistic that school officials would act in good faith to redress the problem of language difference

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At first, it appeared that these efforts would be thwarted. Both the trial judge and the court of appeals ruled against the students, rejecting their statutory and constitutional claims under federal and state law. The district court, though sympathetic to the students' plight, concluded that the San Francisco school system had discharged its legal obligations by making "the same education.. .available on the same terms and conditions" as it did to others enrolled in the district."' The court of appeals agreed, distinguishing the impact of state-mandated segregation from language difference.

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in 1970, OCR, a federal agency charged with enforcing Title VI, concluded that its broad mandate of non-discrimination reached language barriers that "exclude[] national origin-minority group children fi-om effective participation in the educational program offered by a school district."* According to OCR's understanding, language could serve as a proxy for race, ethnicity, and national origin and should not be used to mask illicit discrimination on these grounds

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Passed in 1964, Title VI provides that "[n]o person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."'' In response to civil rights protests and ongoing unrest. Congress enacted the omnibus bill to target segregation and discrimination in the South. With its focus on the subordination of Blacks, Title VI did not specifically address the problems of linguistic minorities.^

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The Lau case was filed on behalf of 2,856 Chinese-speaking students in the San Francisco school system, nearly two-thirds of whom received instruction only in English. Although the school district offered special language assistance to Spanishspeaking students, it did nothing to accommodate Chinese-speaking students. In demanding relief, the plaintiffs relied not only on the equal protection clause but also on Title VI as interpreted by OCR.^

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The Supreme Court's decision in Lau was based not on a constitutional wrong, but on a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, as interpreted by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The statute, along with OCR's interpretation, barred school practices that have the effect of excluding children from the educational process based on language, where language is a proxy for race, ethnicity, or national origin.

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How did the Asian American Movement increased the presence of Asian American in the U.S. socialty?

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Exclusiveness/  a woman 's opinion/quote

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Exclusiveness/  a woman 's opinion/quote

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In Victor and Brett De Bary Nee's oral histories, Longtime Californ', Lisa Mah captured Asian Americans' sense of he elusiveness of mainstream tolerance in this period.

My family was very aware that they were embattled Chinese in white district, that they had spent any years finding that place to live, and that at any moment you could be thrown out. And somehow a quality I sensed  out of all this, about being Chinese, was vulnerability. So you had to watch your step and you had to be very clever, you had to placate, you had to maneuver

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In 1960, Japanese American, Chinese american , and Filipino Americans comprised 80 percent of the Asian american and Pacific Islander population. The population had overlapping and similar histories of manual labor and surviving institutionalized discrimination. The parents were primarily working class, from the plantation, farms, railroads, mines, laundries, factories, and restaurants. There were also a significant number of small shop keepers and merchants. A native- born, second-generation population had grown to became the majority of the population. Nevertheless, they faced discrimination and prejudice that , while no longer legally sanctioned was socially pervasive. Over two-thirds of each of the Chinese, Filipinos, and Japanese Populations in 1960 were still in laboring and service occupations-clerical, food, laundry service, garment production, crafts, and agricultural labor-that were often marginal in their working conditions and low in their compensation.

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The contemporary Asian American Movement (AAM) began nearly simultaneously in numerous campuses and communities across the country. Galvanize by issues that directly affected them, young Chinese, Japaneses, Korean,and Filipino American took collective actions as part of pan-Asian efforts to achieve their goal of building Asian American studies programs on college campuses, establishing badly needed social services in their communities, and ending an unjust war in Vietnam.

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because of a dramatic upsurge in international migration to the United State, the Asian american demographic category shifted from being one mostly made up of American-born citizens to one of largely foreign- born members Asian refuges from war and political upheaval were a contributing factor to the phenomenon.

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The Lau decision paved the way for reforms in bilingual education for non-English students. Th year following the decision saw significant development of legislation and program in bilingual education, among them being the passing of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 and the amending of the Bilingual Education Act of 1968.

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The U.S Supreme Court founded that the school district had violated Title VI of the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the regulation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The Court held that the school district had denied the students a meaningful opportunity to participation in the public education.

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Lau v. Nicholas was a 1970 class-action suit by Chinese American students seeking relief against unequal educational opportunities. They claimed that the San Francisco school district violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S Constitution because less than half of them were provided with English-language instruction

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The Asian American movement compiled an uneven record on gender equality. On the one hand, the movement generally admired Mao, who famously stated, “Women hold up half the sky.” It tended to advocate for women’s liberation, took up many women’s issues, and featured women as prominent leaders of key organizations.

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AAPA thus included Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Americans, both American-born and immigrants, from the mainland and Hawaii. AAPA advocated for Asian American solidarity to counter racism and imperialism and declared its camaraderie with other people of color in the United States and abroad.

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Yuji Ichioka, who would go on to be an influential historian, coined the term “Asian American” when he co-founded the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) as an explicitly pan-Asian organization in 1968.

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The Asian American movement grew out of two of the most significant social movements of the 1960s: the Black Power and anti-Vietnam War movements.

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the Asian American movement forged a coalitional politics that united Asians of varying ethnicities and declared solidarity with other Third World people in the United States and abroad. Segments of the movement struggled for community control of education, provided social services and defended affordable housing in Asian ghettoes, organized exploited workers, protested against U.S. imperialism, and built new multiethnic cultural institutions.

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In the early to mid-1960s, a number of Asian Americans participated individually in various New Left movements—including the Free Speech Movement, Civil Rights movement, and anti-Vietnam War movement—that did not directly address Asian American issues.

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Previously, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and Asian Indians participated in divergent forms of political organizing. Class-based politics aimed to gain better wages and working conditions; homeland politics attempted to bolster the international standings of their nations of origins or free them from colonial rule; assimilationist politics attempted to demonstrate that Asians were worthy of the rights and privileges of citizenship.

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By 1968, Asian immigrants and their descendants had been in the United States for over a century and had engaged in various forms of resistance to racism for many decades

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It also extended to Honolulu, where activists sought to preserve land rights in rural Hawai’i. It contributed to the larger radical movement for power and justice that critiqued capitalism and neo-imperialism, which flourished during the 1960s and 1970s.

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protested vigorously against the Vietnam War.

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The largely refugee Vietnamese-American population, on the other hand, displays "characteristics more typical of |castelike' minorities--blacks, American Indians, and Hispanics."

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1. What' were the effects of the Asian American Movement on Vietnam war?
2. How do they fight against discrimination and racism?
3. What do they think about the women's right?

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1. they protested and had street march
2. They were treated unequally compared other American how had different skin color
3. they were the minorities in the U.S

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The Asian American Movement was a social movement for racial justice, most active during the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, which brought together people of various Asian ancestries in the United States who protested against racism and U.S. neo-imperialism, demanded changes in institutions such as colleges and universities, organized workers, and sought to provide social services such as housing, food, and healthcare to poor people

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date: 15 May 2018

Summary and Keywords

The Asian American Movement was a social movement for racial justice, most active during the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, which brought together people of various Asian ancestries in the United States who protested against racism and U.S. neo-imperialism, demanded changes in institutions such as colleges and universities, organized workers, and sought to provide social services such as housing, food, and healthcare to poor people. As one of its signal achievements, the Movement created the category "Asian American," (coined by historian and activist Yuji Ichioka), which encompasses the multiple Asian ethnic groups who have migrated to the United States. Its founding principle of coalitional politics emphasizes solidarity among Asians of all ethnicities, multiracial solidarity among Asian Americans as well as with African, Latino, and Native Americans in the United States, and transnational solidarity with peoples around the globe impacted by U.S. militarism.

The movement participated in solidarity work with other Third World peoples in the United States, including the Third World Liberation Front strikes at San Francisco State College and University of California, Berkeley. The Movement fought for housing rights for poor people in the urban cores of San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Seattle, and Philadelphia; it created arts collectives, published newspapers and magazines, and protested vigorously against the Vietnam War. It also extended to Honolulu, where activists sought to preserve land rights in rural Hawai'i. It contributed to the larger radical movement for power and justice that critiqued capitalism and neo-imperialism, which flourished during the 1960s and 1970s.

Keywords: Asian American Movement, racial justice, housing rights, neo-imperialism, anti-capitalism, Vietnam War

Origins

The Asian American movement grew out of two of the most significant social movements of the 1960s: the Black Power and anti-Vietnam War movements. Unsatisfied with insistence on inclusion and civil rights, the Asian American movement demanded self-determination and power both for Asians in the United States and in Asia. The Red Guard Party of San Francisco provides the clearest example of how engaging with Black Power helped Asian Americans build an understanding of their own racial positioning in the United States. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, established in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, rose to prominence as the vanguard organization among radicals of color by the late 1960s. The Panthers melded radical politics with racial pride, advocating community control over institutions such as education and law enforcement in black ghettos and demanding fair housing and employment, while celebrating the aesthetics of black people, black bodies, and black culture. This powerful mélange of ideas impacted Chinese Americans in the ghetto of San Francisco Chinatown, which suffered from substandard education, housing, social services, and employment opportunities, but an overabundance of police brutality. When a group of young people who congregated regularly at the Legitimate Ways pool hall on Jackson Street began to discuss how to address these conditions, the Panthers took notice, visiting the pool hall, inviting the Chinatown youth to study sessions on political theory, and urging them to form an organization. The Red Guard Party that arose was named after Mao's youth cadre and largely mirrored the Panthers' ideology and language, but with key adaptations. Where the Panthers advocated power for "black" people, the Red Guards demanded it for "yellow" people, a sign that the largely Chinese American Red Guards had adopted a racial, rather than ethnic rubric. Minister of Information Alex Hing articulated the commonalities shared by blacks and Asian Americans, who both experienced racism and exploitation in the United States, and argued that the Panthers' example of directly providing social services (such as the free breakfast program) provided a viable model for Chinatown.

Across the Bay, in Berkeley, a graduate student named Yuji Ichioka, who would go on to be an influential historian, coined the term "Asian American" when he co-founded the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) as an explicitly pan-Asian organization in 1968. Seeking Asian Americans with progressive leanings, Ichioka and co-founder Emma Gee pored through the roster of the antiwar Peace and Freedom Party, identifying all individuals with Asian last names and inviting them to join the new organization. AAPA thus included Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Americans, both American-born and immigrants, from the mainland and Hawaii. AAPA advocated for Asian American solidarity to counter racism and imperialism and declared its camaraderie with other people of color in the United States and abroad. Richard Aoki, undoubtedly the most colorful member of the group, served as a Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party prior to helping to form AAPA.

On the East Coast, the formation of Asian Americans for Action (AAA), in 1969, demonstrated again how the Asian American movement drew together the influences of Black Power and the antiwar movement. Two longtime leftist Nisei (second generation Japanese American) women, Kazu Iijima and Minn Masuda, noted approvingly that the anti-racist and anti-imperialist politics preached by Black Power advocates like H. Rap Brown were also accompanied by a strong dose of racial pride. They saw Black Power as an antidote to the pro-assimilationist fever that had struck many Japanese Americans after their experiences in concentration camps during World War II. They sought ways to convey this sense of pride to the next generation in their own community. Significantly, Iijima's son Chris urged them to reach out to all Asians, regardless of ethnicity. Iijima and Masuda's recruitment strategy resembled Ichioka's in that they organized within the antiwar movement by approaching every individual Asian they spotted at Vietnam protests. The best-known AAA member was Yuri Kochiyama, whose legendary radicalism formed through her relationship with Malcolm X, whom she counted as a personal friend.

Because it arose from encounters with Black Power and antiwar protests, the Asian American movement eschewed the Civil Rights framework in favor of pursuing self-determination for Asian Americans and all other Third World people in the United States, and opposing what it deemed to be a genocidal, anti-Asian war in Indochina.

Activism on Campus

The strike at San Francisco State began on November 6, 1968, with the TWLF issuing fifteen non-negotiable demands that collectively promised to revolutionize the college by according Third World people authority over the production and dissemination of knowledge about their communities, in terms of both curriculum and institutional control, and granting Third World applicants much greater access to admission and financial aid. TWLF members picketed campus, held large rallies and marches on campus, and fought running battles with police. At times class attendance dropped by fifty percent as the strike brought the campus to a near standstill. Acting President S. I. Hayakawa gleefully repressed the strikers, calling the San Francisco Police Department's Tactical Squad onto campus and having hundreds arrested over the course of the strike. Hayakawa, a Japanese American who had emigrated from Canada, presented a particular problem for Asian American strikers, as he positioned himself as a neutral arbiter between blacks and whites, in stark contrast to the strikers who understood Asian Americans to be a racially subjugated group positioned alongside other people of color. Thus, Asian Americans condemned Hayakawa as a "bootlicker" of California Governor Ronald Reagan and decidedly not a spokesman for their communities. After nearly five months of back and forth action and repressive police action, the TWLF signed a settlement on March 21, 1969, that ended the strike and created the first ever School of Ethnic Studies in the United States, comprised of departments of American Indian studies, Asian American studies, Black studies, and La Raza studies.

Students at the prestigious University of California, Berkeley-where Blacks, Chicana/os, and Native Americans made up only 1.5 percent of the student body-drew inspiration from their compatriots at SF State. The Afro-American Student Union (AASU), Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), Mexican American Student Confederation (MASC), and Native American Student Union (NASU) formed the Berkeley version of the Third World Liberation Front. Student activists negotiated with administrators for months, suggesting reforms that would make the university more accessible, relevant, and responsive to their communities. Dissatisfied with the scope of institutional concessions and the pace of implementation, the TWLF called a strike on January 22, 1969. They demanded the establishment of a Third World College with departments of Asian studies, Black Studies, and Chicano studies subject only to community control, recruitment of Third World people in positions ranging from administrators to custodians, and full access to financial aid for Third World applicants. Unsurprisingly, the TWLF strike at Berkeley, famous as a roiling political cauldron from which arose the Free Speech Movement and antiwar protests, featured impassioned picketers and demonstrators, along with violent police repression. The strike ended after three months, when, on March 19, the chancellor announced the formation of a department addressing the experiences of Black, Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans. Both TWLF strikes concluded successfully, in the sense that they forced the establishment of academic units dedicated to ethnic studies; however, in neither case did the administrations grant oversight over the units to students and community members, nor did they cede control over financial aid.

Asian American students at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and Seattle Central Community College also struggled to force their institutions to respond to the needs of their communities. In response to a 1969 proposal by students and community members for an Ethnic Studies unit that would address the histories and cultures of Native Hawaiian people and ethnic immigrants, the University of Hawai'i administration cannily agreed to create it, but only as an experimental program. Over the next eight years, Ethnic Studies was threatened repeatedly with dissolution, only to be rescued by student and community protests. The Board of Regents finally made the program permanent in 1977, but it did not become a degree-granting department until 1995. In Seattle, Alan Sugiyama and Mike Tagawa, who had been a member of the Black Panther Party, founded the Oriental Student Union in 1970. OSU picketed and occupied the Seattle Central administration building, demanding the hiring Asian American administrators, which echoed the calls for educational self-determination in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Honolulu. Today, the fact that Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies are taught at innumerable colleges and universities across the nation provides a testament to the lasting impact of Asian American student activists who collaborated with like-minded allies.

Self-Determination for Communities

From Honolulu to New York, and many points in between, Asian American movement organizations sought to improve living and working conditions in urban ghettos and rural areas by operating "Serve the People" programs that provided badly needed social services, fighting against the displacement of poor people by urban redevelopment, and organizing workers.

In Hawai'i, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino "locals" joined Native Hawaiians in 1970 and 1971 in their quest to preserve the then-rural Kalama Valley, located east of Honolulu. The powerful Bishop Estate that owned the land planned to evict the poor families and farmers who lived in the valley in order to build hotels, high-rise buildings, and a golf course. University of Hawai'i and antiwar activists formed the Kokua Kalama Committee (KKC) to support the residents. Members moved into the valley, erected tents, planted vegetable gardens, and did chores for farmers. Despite these efforts, the residents were eventually evicted. KKC transformed into Kokua Hawai'i, which fought for Native Hawaiian sovereignty from an anti-colonialist perspective, which enabled them to form relationships with other peoples colonized by the United States, including Puerto Ricans and Inuits, and also with Asian American radicals. Urban renewal also threatened Honolulu's Chinatown, where elderly Asian men lived in cheap residential hotels. A group called People Against Chinatown Evictions (PACE) opposed the destruction of the hotels and succeeded in forcing the city to construct replacement housing.

Asian American activists in Seattle struggled to preserve the International District (known fondly as "the ID"), the traditional home of Asian immigrant communities. Groups like Inter*Im, the International District Youth Council, and International District Drop-In Center vigorously opposed the construction of the Kingdome, a sports stadium that threatened to demolish affordable housing and destroy the character of the neighborhood. Seattle activists, who showed a greater willingness to work with city and federal officials than radicals in other locales, obtained funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to rehabilitate low-income apartments. Three hundred volunteers spent three years cleaning, repairing, and renovating the Milwaukee Hotel, one of the largest residential hotels in the ID. Asian American activists also provided food to the elderly, opened centers that provided counseling and legal services, and obtained state and local funding to establish a multilingual health clinic.

Los Angeles was another critical site of Asian American struggle in the 1970s. The Little Tokyo People's Rights Organization and the Anti-Eviction Taskforce defended the historically Japanese American enclave of Little Tokyo against redevelopment, which threatened to displace affordable housing units and small ethnic businesses. Yellow Brotherhood and Asian American Hardcore organized among Asian male youth, while Asian Sisters fought drug abuse among young women. The East Wind collective, composed primarily of Japanese Americans, worked assiduously to develop relationships with other people of color. The UCLA Asian American Studies Center functioned as a hub for activists; several UCLA students created Gidra, the monthly newspaper published from 1969 to 1974, which became the unofficial newspaper of record for the Asian American movement. California's Central Valley saw the formation of the Yellow Seed organization in Stockton, and Asian American volunteers helped to build Agbayani Village, a United Farm Workers retirement home for elderly Chicano and Filipino laborers in Delano.

Although the West Coast-home of the majority of Asian Americans-produced the largest movement organizations, critical activism occurred on the East Coast as well. Beginning in 1971, the Philadelphia organization Yellow Seeds (unrelated to the Stockton Yellow Seed) fought to preserve the city's small Chinatown, provided translation services, job training, draft counseling, and advice on healthcare. From 1972 to 1977, its newspaper, Yellow Seeds, publicized the plight of elderly immigrants, exposed the role of the Chinese Benevolent Association as a slumlord, and decried the exploitation of Chinatown workers. New York City spawned I Wor Kuen ("Righteous Harmonious Fists"), which took its name from the Chinese martial artists who took on British imperialism in the unsuccessful Boxer Rebellions. IWK aligned with the People's Republic of China, admired Mao, and argued for Asian American solidarity with other people of color. In Chinatown, IWK screened pro-Chinese films and faced physical repression from goons hired by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), Chinatown's anti-communist power elite. On the affordable housing front, IWK supported Chinese and Italian American families facing eviction due to expansion by New York Telephone. The construction of Confucius Plaza, an enormous housing project in Chinatown, provided an opportunity for Asian American groups to demand employment for Asian American workers. In 1974, the radical group Asian Study Group (ASG) and its affiliate, Asian Americans for Equal Employment (AAFEE), protested against discriminatory hiring practices and also the CCBA's lackluster advocacy for the community. The police beating, in 1975, of a Chinese American architectural engineer named Peter Yew served as another lightning rod, drawing over 10,000 marchers to City Hall and sparking a sit-down in the middle of Broadway Avenue.

Asian American activism in these diverse locations centered on similar issues: land, housing, social services, and employment. Although the various movement organizations did not always agree with each other, and in fact disagreed vociferously at times, they shared commitments to safeguarding the character of traditionally Asian American neighborhoods, defending affordable housing, and preserving small ethnic businesses. Their "Serve the People" programs directly provided health care, food, legal and counseling services. Finally, they sought to increase access to jobs and organized for better wages and working conditions for Asian American workers.

Internationalism and Interracialism

A critical internationalism deeply shaped the Asian American movement. The nations of left Asia-the People's Republic of China, North Vietnam, and North Korea-provided exemplars that the movement admired; in some cases, Asian political activists played key roles in mobilizing Asian American movement organizations. Tracing the development of the Kalayaan collective and Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino (KDP, or the Union of Democratic Filipinos) illustrates one case of how the melding of Asian leftists with U.S. Third World activists produced a new, transnational formation. Philippine student activists associated with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), who fled the country in the face of political repression, found common cause with Filipino Americans who had cut their teeth in Third World movements in the United States. The Kalayaan collective published a newspaper in 1971 and 1972, and its members formalized their organization as KDP in 1973, following President Ferdinand Marcos's declaration of martial law in the Philippines. KDP held a dual focus, advocating revolution in the Philippines and socialism in the United States. It mustered opposition to martial law, mobilized Filipino American youth by building a sense of Filipino ethnic pride, participated in the I-Hotel struggle, and defended two Filipina nurses, Narciso and Perez, in a famous trial for murder.

Although most Asian American movement groups did not share KDP's direct tie to Asian activists, they were nevertheless deeply influenced by and admired Asian radicalism and performed solidarity work on Asian issues, particularly those linked to U.S. militarism. The Vietnam War loomed as the largest international issue confronted by the Asian American movement. Although groups like AAPA and AAA had arisen in part out of the antiwar movement, the Asian American movement adopted a distinctive line against the war. Whereas various antiwar groups opposed warfare in general, the disproportionate killing of black and brown soldiers, or the capitalist and imperialist aspects of the war, Asian Americans protesters objected specifically to its anti-Asian nature. In rallies, demonstrations, leaflets, flyers, newsletters, and newspapers, they criticized the war as genocidal against the Vietnamese people, whom they embraced as fellow Asians. Asian American contingents marched as cohesive groups within larger antiwar protests, flying the flags of left Asia and endorsing self-determination for the peoples of Indochina, whom they characterized as uniformly opposed to U.S. intervention. Demonstrating against the war together created alliances among various movement organizations and enhanced their sense of Asian American identity as a shared multiethnic collective.

The Asian American movement's line against the war extended to its stance on many other international issues and its interpretation of the history of the Pacific. Every August, commemorations of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki emphasized the U.S. military's wanton disregard for Asian lives and situated the bombings within the long history of U.S. militarism in Asia, noting the brutality of the U.S.-Philippines War of 1898 and the occupations of the Philippines, Okinawa, Japan, and Korea. Movement groups, even those comprised mostly of Japanese Americans, understood Japan to be a "running dog" of U.S. imperialism and thus opposed the renewal of the U.S.-Japan Security Pact, port visits by Japanese naval ships, and the expansion of Narita Airport outside of Tokyo. They also viewed Marcos as an instrument of U.S. imperialism and opposed his dictatorship of the Philippines.

In contrast to its opposition to U.S. militarism, the movement admired Asian nations that had thrown off the yoke of western imperialism, viewing mainland China as a shining example of the possibilities of Asian socialism. (Given what is now known about the human toll of the Cultural Revolution and the repressive nature of North Korea, we can say in retrospect that this perspective was based in part upon a lack of plausible information on communist Asia and also required a certain level of overly romantic political naïveté). Several individuals, including Alex Hing of the Red Guard Party, antiwar activist Pat Sumi, and Gidra writer Evelyn Yoshimura traveled to places such as the People's Republic of China, North Vietnam, and North Korea. Their letters and testimonies praising the leaders of these nations and lauding the equality and lack of racism they found demonstrate the intensity of the desire among Asian American radicals to find alternatives to capitalism and imperialism. These longings were shared with radicals of all races during this period, and indeed, Hing and Sumi journeyed to Asia as members of Eldridge Cleaver's 1970 U.S. People's Anti-Imperialist Delegation.

The Asian American movement's support for anti-imperialist mobilizations abroad reflected its domestic agenda, which linked it closely to social movements for liberation among people of color in the United States. As discussed above, the Asian American movement emerged from engagements with Black Power advocates, and its campus activism proceeded in alliance with black, Chicano, and Native American students. In Los Angeles, Asian American activists lived and worked in multiracial neighborhoods with African Americans and Chicana/os; in New York, they collaborated with Puerto Ricans; in Honolulu, their efforts supported Native Hawaiians. Gidra covered the Black Panthers, Los Siete de la Raza (seven Latino youth charged with murder in San Francisco), the United Farm Workers, which combined Filipino and Mexican workers, the Chicano Moratorium against the war, the Young Lords Party, and Native American occupations of Alcatraz and Wounded Knee. As the 1970s wore on, various Asian American organizations consolidated with a number of Black, Chicano, and Latino radical groups to form multiracial parties, including the League of Revolutionary Struggle-Marxist Leninist, Line of March, and Revolutionary Union.

Gender and Women's Liberation

The Asian American movement compiled an uneven record on gender equality. On the one hand, the movement generally admired Mao, who famously stated, "Women hold up half the sky." It tended to advocate for women's liberation, took up many women's issues, and featured women as prominent leaders of key organizations. On the other hand, however, its practices did not always live up to its ideological and rhetorical support for women's equality, as women often found themselves marginalized to support roles and subjected to sexual objectification. Asian American women caught in this contradiction linked racial justice to women's liberation, arguing that neither could be achieved without the other. They formed women's organizations, but located them within the larger Asian American movement rather than breaking away from it.

On the international front, the Asian American movement's critique of the Vietnam War took on a decidedly gendered perspective. The war's effect on women numbered among the movement's chief objections, as it noted that the war encouraged American GIs to view all Vietnamese women, and by extension all Asian women, as prostitutes. Conversely, the movement developed a great admiration for Vietnamese women, who personified principled resistance to U.S. imperialism. A drawing published in Gidra, of a peasant woman with a baby in one hand and a rifle in the other, emblematized the belief that women could be revolutionary fighters as well as nurturers. Asian American women also drew inspiration from Vietnamese women whom they met in person at two conferences held in Canada in 1971, at which the Vietnamese women enthralled North American audiences with their explanation of their struggle for self-determination and their staunch resolution to achieve victory.

Culture

Community-based arts organizations fostered artistic expressions that documented and celebrated Asian American history, experiences, and cultures and used art as a way to mobilize and empower communities. Basement Workshop (BW), the most important Asian American cultural institution on the East Coast, began in 1970, in New York City's Chinatown, but soon incorporated other Asian American writers and artists. Its Creative Arts Program introduced community members to creative writing, music, and visual arts including photography and silk screening, and its Chinatown cleanup program painted street murals. In addition, BW published Bridge, a bimonthly magazine covering Asian cultural and political issues in the United States and abroad, from 1971 to 1978. San Francisco's Kearny Street Workshop (KSW) began in 1972, in the basement of the I-Hotel. Like its East Coast counterpart, KSW soon blossomed into a multiethnic organization that integrated arts education and community empowerment. KSW offered workshops in crafts such as making jewelry and stained glass, photography, silk screening, and creative writing. KSW artists painted a block-long mural depicting Asian workers on the I-Hotel and produced the images that became the visual icons of the struggle to save the hotel.

Asian American theater also thrived during the movement period. The most significant theater companies included East West Players in Los Angeles, Pan Asian Repertory Theater in New York City, Asian American Theater Workshop in San Francisco, and Asian Exclusion Act in Seattle. Each of these organizations produced works by playwrights of varying ethnicities and assembled multiethnic casts and audiences. EWP, founded in 1965, fostered Asian American drama with its playwriting contest, produced important plays such as Frank Chin's Chickencoop Chinaman and Wakako Yamauchi's And the Soul Shall Dance, and afforded Asian American actors opportunities to act in canonical plays by authors including Shakespeare and Chekov. AATW began in 1973, as a summer training program for the American Conservatory Theater, intended to develop Asian American talent in writing, acting, directing, and production. Director Frank Chin encouraged fledgling writers and actors to create scripts and performances based upon oral histories collected from community members, reflecting his aim to have Asian American theater speak from and reflect the cultures that ordinary Asian immigrants and their descendants built in the United States.

Visual Communications (VC), founded by Asian American movement participants in Los Angeles, fused filmmaking with the movement's radical politics of interracialism, internationalism, and community empowerment. Its early productions examined the lives of poor Asian American workers and sought to counter racist media stereotypes of Asians as exotic and passive. The cultural institutions built by the Asian American movement stand as some of its most lasting legacies, as Asian Improv Records (now Asian Improv aRts), Kearny Street Workshop, East West Players, AATW (now Asian American Theater Company), Pan-Asian Repertory Theater, and Visual Communications continue to foster and provide venues for Asian American creative expression.

Outlook

The Asian American movement began in the heyday of Black Power and antiwar activism and flourished throughout the early to mid-1970s. By the late 1970s, however, many of the movement's organizations shifted focus. A number of groups consolidated with non-Asian American counterparts to form multiracial radical parties, while other fruits of the movement became institutionalized as artistic organizations, academic units, and non-profit social service agencies. These alterations marked an inflection point at which the Asian American movement moved away from its signature characteristics of grassroots, community-oriented radicalism. However, even today new forms of action, new issues, and new actors continue to emerge that recall the Asian American movement's dedication to bettering the lives and working conditions of people of Asian ancestry in the United States and allying with other people of color in the U.S. and abroad.

Discussion of the Literature

In her enormously useful historiographical overview of the Asian American movement, Diane C. Fujino periodizes writings about the movement into the 1960s and 1970s, dominated by activists writing in the moment; the 1980s, characterized by an absence of work; the 1990s, typified by civil rights interpretations; and the 2000s, in which scholars emphasize the radical roots of the movement. Her categorization rings true. For example, two anthologies published by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, Roots and Counterpoint, contained reprints from Asian American movement publications and analytical essays covering the history of Asian migration and labor, contemporary community struggles, education, U.S. imperialism (especially in Asia), and Asian American political organizing. The key anthology, Asian Women, published by UC Berkeley Asian American Studies, connected racism and patriarchy to capitalism and imperialism, arguing that they represented interlocking systems of oppression. During the third period, William Wei published The Asian American Movement, in which he characterized the movement as an outgrowth of the Civil Rights movement and divided it into reformist and revolutionary wings, valorizing the former and demonizing the latter. Since 2000, numerous works have countered this interpretation, locating the Asian American movement as an outgrowth of the Black Power and Anti-Vietnam War movements. These works emphasize the movement's advocacy of self-determination rather than civil rights, preference for grassroots politics instead of lobbying, and opposition to U.S. militarism in Asia and elsewhere. In The Snake Dance of Asian American Activism: Community, Vision, and Power, Michael Liu, Kim Geron, and Tracy Lai analyze the movement using social movement theory. Daryl Joji Maeda's Rethinking the Asian American Movement argues that the movement exhibited a radically coalitional impulse that united Asians across ethnic divides, sought to ally with other people of color in the United States, and declared solidarity with Asians in Asia. This extended on his analysis in Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America, a cultural history in which he explained the movement's twin goals of confronting racism at home and imperialism abroad.

Alongside these general overviews, several monographs examine particular topics within the Asian American movement. Diane Fujino's closely collaborative biographies of Yuri Kochiyama ( Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama) and Richard Aoki ( Samurai Among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance, and a Paradoxical Life), reveal the complexities of the lives of two legendary activists, both of whom journeyed from naïve patriotism to critical internationalism and were deeply influenced by Black Power. Estella Habal's San Francisco's International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement provides a concentrated look at one of the most important and best-known chapters of the movement, explaining both coalitions and contradictions within the struggle to save the hotel. In Radicals on the Road: Third World Internationalism and American Orientalism during the Vietnam Era, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu shows how travels to and encounters with Left Asia impacted not only Asian American activists, but more generally, the Third World left in the United States.

Both Max Elbaum and Laura Pulido discuss the multiracial movements for power and justice during the 1960s and 1970s and include Asian American activism within this context. Elbaum's Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che examines the transition from related but distinct Third World movements in the U.S. to what he calls the New Communist Movement, a process in which several Asian American groups played integral roles. In Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles, Pulido concentrates on Los Angeles, a hotbed of radicalism by African American, Chicano, and Asian American activists. She concludes that Asian American organizations were the most self-consciously and consistently dedicated to solidarity work among all of the groups she studies.

Primary Sources

Primary sources on the Asian American movement are available in published anthologies and archival collections. These include the contemporary anthologies, Roots, Asian Women, and Counterpoint, along with more recent publications such as Louie and Omatsu, Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment, Fred Ho et al., Legacy to Liberation, and Asian Community Center, Stand Up. Useful archival collections include the Steve Louie Asian American Movement Collection in Special Collections of the Charles E. Young Research Library at the University of California, Los Angeles; the UCLA Asian American Studies Center Reading Room; the Social Protest Collection in the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; the Asian American Studies Collection in the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library; and the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives at UC Santa Barbara, which holds papers of the Asian American Theater Company, Kearney Street Workshop, and several Asian American artists and writers, including Frank Chin.

In conjunction with the wealth of extant written primary sources, oral histories can provide unparalleled levels of detail, explanations of particulars not reflected in the written record, and a sense of the sights, sounds, and feelings that infused the Asian American movement. Researchers should collect oral histories with as many movement participants as possible to capture these data. The standard caveats about oral history apply: memories are partial and tend to be sketchy on specifics such as particular dates; recollections are often tailored to support specific perspectives; and oral histories should be understood as meaning-making narratives rather than as transcriptions of events.

Links to Digital Materials

Notes:

(Daryl Joji Maeda, Michael Liu, Kim Geron, and Tracy Lai, 1.) For more elaborate overviews of the Asian American movement, see Rethinking the Asian American Movement (New York: Routledge, 2012); and The Snake Dance of Asian American Activism: Community, Vision, and Power (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008).

(Karen Umemoto, "'On Strike!' San Francisco State College Strike, 1968-69: The Role of Asian American Students," 2.) On the TWLF strike at San Francisco State, see Amerasia Journal 15.1 (1989): 3-41; and Jason Michael Ferreira, "All Power to the People: A Comparative History of Third World Radicalism in San Francisco, 1968-1974" (PhD Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2003). For information on the TWLF strike at Berkeley, see Harvey C. Dong, "The Origins and Trajectory of Asian American Political Activism in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1968-1978" (PhD Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2002).

(May Fu, "'Serve the People and You Help Yourself': Japanese-American Anti-Drug Organizing in Los Angeles, 1969 to 1972," Susie Ling, "The Mountain Movers: Asian American Women's Movement in Los Angeles," Mary Uyematsu Kao, "Three Step Boogie in Los Angeles: Sansei Women in the Asian American Movement," 7.) Social Justice 35.2 (2008): 80-99; Amerasia Journal 15.1 (1989): 51-67; and Amerasia Journal 35.1 (2009): 112-138.

( 8.) See Wu, Radicals on the Road, chapters 8 and 9.

( 14.) Amy Tachiki, Eddie Wong, and Franklin Odo, eds., Roots: An Asian American Reader (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 1971); International Hotel Women's Collective, "Sisterhood Is Powerful," in Asian Women (Berkeley, CA, 1971), 122-124.); Emma Gee, ed., Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian America (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 1976); William Wei, The Asian American Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); Michael Liu, Kim Geron, and Tracy Lai. The Snake Dance of Asian American Activism: Community, Vision, and Power (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008); Daryl Joji Maeda, Rethinking the Asian American Movement (New York: Routledge, 2012); and Daryl J. Maeda, Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).

(Diane C. Fujino, Diane C. Fujino, 15.) Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Samurai among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance, and a Paradoxical Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012); Habal, San Francisco's International Hotel; and Wu, Radicals on the Road.

(Pulido, Laura. 16.) Elbaum, Revolution in the Air; and Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

( 18.) Tachiki, Wong, and Odo, Roots: An Asian American Reader; International Hotel Women's Collective, "Sisterhood Is Powerful"; and Gee, ed., Counterpoint: Perspectives on Asian America.

(Steve Louie and Glenn Omatsu, eds., Fred Ho, Carolyn Antonio, Diane Fujino, and Steve Yip, eds., Asian Community Center Archive Group, ed., 19.) Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment (Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2001); Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian/Pacific America (San Francisco: AK Press, 2000); and Stand Up: An Archive Collection of the Bay Area Asian American Movement, 1968-1974 (Berkeley, CA: Eastwind Books, 2009).

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Asian American Movement - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History

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The Asian American Movement was a social movement for racial justice, most active during the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, which brought together people of various Asian ancestries in the United States who protested against racism and U.S.