Has the league curator on the project karens focus was to , empower the individual voices that were unknown up to that time. One of her most remarkable skills through the process was just to listen. She listened carefully, compassionately and with the critical mindset to understand better the experiences of these former inmates. She worked diligently with our exhibition designers to provide a powerful platform for these voices to be heard missing their making their stories accessible, compelling, and relevant to a multigenerational audience. Intersecting the past, the present and the future. In typical fashion, in typical ja fashion, karen is quick to deflect credit and pass it on to those who worked with her. But the truth is as a leader her , methodology of engagement was inspirational for all of us. Watching her interact with so many individuals who endured the camp experience she illustrated , a Compassionate Care for them and their stories. As a result everyone on that team wanted to make sure that our work would also reflect that same dedication, sensitivity and care she gave to each and every one of the stories. Her book serve the people, making asianamerican the long 1960s is her news work. It tells the story using firstperson voices of the social and cultural movements that brought together many of our disparate communities into a more unified political unity. Help me welcome dr. Karen ishizuka. [applause] dr. Karen ishizuka that is the nicest clement has ever been to me. [laughter] thats because i acknowledged him as being the most important person that the museum and i really mean it and anybody who knows the museum knows what i mean. Thank you for coming today. Im especially gratified that so many activists who actually helped make asian america are here today. Of course, there are 1000 more people who helped make asian america that i couldve included in the book. But what people like kathy he was here, david, and so many others of you asian america , would not exist with all that you provided, the substance and the soul and the stories that make up through the people. It is very fitting that the panel today is taking place during the 50th anniversary of the black Liberation Movement that is being commemorative right now with events across the country. As ive read remarks about this half century milestone, they resonate with me because they sound like they are talking about us. For example, the sncc legacy project wrote, the call of black power lead to new goals and redefine the measures of success inspiring a new generation of activists. It called for a black consciousness, establishing new independent organizations and institutions that were controlled by black people. It shaped personal as well as political activism. So in a very real way they are speaking about us. Stuart hall, the former black foremost black british political thinker said that when black was first coined it signified the common experience of racism and marginalization. More downhome, my friends went to her cousins wedding in the crenshaw district and chuck, who was black, asked where they only why are they only playing black music from the 1960s and 1970s . And mari answered because its a wedding. In los angeles, 10,001 gold creams, cantonese food, james brown and earth wind and fire. It was not just l. A. Lawson inada said been musically most loved and played was negro music. It was something we could share in, in common, like a lingua franca in our code communities. In our distorted reality of aliens and alienation it even felt like citizenship. Thats because yellow isnt is neither white nor black but in so far as asians and africans share a subordinate position for the master class yellow is a shade of black and , black a shade of yellow. It in this historic and National Context im so pleased to be joined by activists young and not so young. Or maybe old and not so old. In looking back in the making of asianamerican looking ahead to the work that needs to be done. I have the amazingly good cahang to have jeff right the intro to my book. Jeff chang wrote cant stop wont stop, the foremost book on hiphop. Who we be, the colorization of america. In it he writes, there was a term when dust of the time of the term asian america was not a demographic category but a fight you are picking with the world. This book is about that fight. Most asianPacific Islanders now have grown up with so many asianamerican and is in Pacific Island organization that asianamerican has become neutralized into a mere adjective. Its been depoliticized. Until the 1960s, there were no asianamericans. We were chineseamericans, japaneseamericans, filipino americans who constituted the majority of asian ethnic groups in the country at the time. By 1970, 80 of japaneseamericans and 50 of chineseamericans and filipino americans were born in the u. S. But regardless, rather than americans, we were lumped together as orientals. Because we were nonwhite, we are subject to the dominant and white, the dominance of whiteness and subsequent subordination taste by all americans of color. Neither were we black in a society that was rendered in black and white. Hence we composed a liminal category, foreigners in our own country. During the 1960s and social change was happening around the world we realized two important things. One, as separate asian ethnic groups we were overlooked and ignored. Two, assimilation not only did not work it was no longer the , goal. War, aby the vietnam racist war against People Like Us and pulled by the promise of , the third world that called for selfdetermination rather than assimilation, asians throughout the u. S. Came together to form a political identity of Asian Americans and in order to be seen and heard. With this new voice we created a new world. It marked the end of our being sidelined as orientals and the emergence of a homeland we called asian america. Like the parable of the blind man, each describing the elephant differently depending on whether they were holding its long trunk or its thin tail or broadside there are conflicting memories, analyses and conclusions about making asianamerica. There is no single correct interpretation just as there is no single correct political line. As a feminist said of the new left, no unified center couldve represented the multiplicity and variety of perspectives and activities. This book is about the fight. This new world we created. It is told her stories of people who fought that could fight. Jeff chang also wrote the preface in 1969 asian america was about young people waking to their in betweeness between black and white, migrants and citizens, silence and screaming. Finding collective relief and mass up willing a feeling. Through the people in the history of what it felt like to live in those times. Its this sense of what it felt to live in those times that i attempted to capture in the book. Every person i interviewed would maintain the asianamerican movement was greater than their part in it but a movement does not make itself. Social movements are more the demonstrations and demands, political slogans and ideologies. They begin with individual epiphanies. Ah ha moments that demand to be heard. I called on activists among the first to transform themselves and others from orientals the asianamericans. I talked with as many and as different kinds of people within the constraints of time and resources. About 120 over approximately eight years. Some were movers and shakers and others were grunts, the proletariat of the movement. All were makers of history. I asked them to share personal discoveries and experiences that led to their intervention as contributors to the social change. Together, their discoveries, activism and reflections are symbolic of our generation of political cohorts as a whole. In this way, this book is more theirs that is mine. The book does not tell the whole story. No one book or film or exhibit can. One of the agendas that i had is to really encourage, inspire or even provoke people to also put their stories down paper. It does tell some of the most amazing, awful, and wonderful stories from across the country ive ever heard. Like helen in boston who was called to stand trial by her africanamerican and asianamerican comrades who demanded she tell them whether or not she was a lesbian. Because homosexuality was a white bourgeois disease and they can nothing to do with her she was. Bea tam in San Francisco who married harvey dong. In between picketing, she went out to buy a new dress before running to city hall to get married and back to join the picket line where she was teased by the strikers on the line because in her haste she had bought a scab dress from macys, which they recognized as one they had sewn. I hope you read some of the other stories in the book. Now i have the honor and pleasure of introducing four activists and very good friends. And also one of her younger activists who is carrying on the work that needs be done. The reading from the book before mike murase emigrated at the age of nine he had been given a book about Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves. When he landed in San Francisco he noticed that all the people in uniforms were white and all the people who were hauling the cargo were black. And i said to myself, he said, i thought these people are free. Not long after that the black white dichotomous a zation of the u. S. Was made clear to mike by means of his black and White Television sets. Since his family had settled in South Central of a most of mikes parents were black and asian. At that time i thought like people run television and black people populated reallife. Mike is currently the director of Service Programs with the Little Tokyo Service center. He is a serial facebook longer blogger and facebook social justice entrepreneur. One of the Many Organizations he founded. 1968 and 1969, mike was instrumental in organizing the first asianamerican study center in the country and ucla and also the newspaper deidra, the monthly of the asianamerican experience which was the first, foremost, and longest running asianamerican newspaper. He has continued his activism nonstop from that time forward. But as i said its important to , remember that although the terms asianamerican and api are commonplace now before the asianamerican movement they did not exist. Mike was there at the very beginning. The most revolutionary moment creating while manifesting a new asianamerican political consciousness. I wanted mike to begin because he can share what it was like to create something from nothing. Mike . [applause] mike murase thank you very much, karen. That was very eloquent. I think you should just keep going but i will try to add to the discussion. I want to thank karen for inviting me to speak here but , more importantly for the book that she wrote. As you can probably tell, it was a monumental effort to capture a period in our lives and in society and to tell it in an accurate truthful narrative. I think thats something thats really lacking in our movement. Before i begin to talk about some of my experiences also want to acknowledge many activists who fought in the trenches with me and fought together who are still here today. I think when we talk about the assessment of the asianamerican movement that began, the first picture was 46 years ago. It did not begin with us. I think it was a period of time when many things coalesced. The friends that i made during that period are still my friends today. Because we struggled together i think we have a special bond that we dont have with other people. Im given about nine minutes to talk about my reflections. Ill probably have to talk and not in complete sentences but just about random words. Youll have to kind of catch the meaning of what im saying. I think youll understand. If i could steal time for any of the other speakers, i like to do that to. [laughter] karen talk about context. Someone told me a long time so that text without context is pretext. Text without context is pretext. You have to have the whole picture to understand a kernel of something thats being told to you. I think about that a lot and i think karen did provide the context and does so in her book. The context for us, not only my personal history that karen talked about but in the world has that time of the latebreaking six. And in this country there are many things going on outside asianamerican communities. The National Context is that in the long struggle of black in black people in this country to gain equality and political power there was a resurgence during the 1950s and 1960s that impact a lot of asianamerican. The Civil Rights Movement with dr. King, sncc, malcolm x, black and other party, cesar chavez, united farmworkers, the brown berets, many others. There was the student movements, Neighborhood Community movements. The womens movement. Peace and antiimperialist movements. There was the counterculture. That was challenging the value system as they existed at that time. That was the National Context. Globally it was the aftermath of world war ii. This was right after eisenhower, kennedy. The u. S. And soviet union were establishing themselves as the predominant superpowers. But the wrath africa, asia and latin america people were standing up and struggles to free themselves from the yokut yoke of colonialism. China stood up against british domination and imperialism. Vietnam struggled for national liberation. All across africa they were kicking out the portuguese british, dutch and other , colonial powers. Whenever you think of the developments in those countries from that point on, i think you have to look at it from when we talk about the asianamerican movement from the lens of what was going on at the time. I think we were influenced by both those national and global context in very profound ways. There was a quote that i found made by a chinese representative. Red china, communist china, whenever negotiating with the u. S. It was trying to some of the world at that time. He said, wherever there is oppression there is resistance. Countries want independence nations want liberation and , people want revolution. Irresistibleing trend in history. And we in the Asian American movement in many ways embrace that old statement of whats going on throughout the world. A lot to take in. In the beginning we were exposed to things that we never really thought about prior to that or imagined possible. Things that we were not prepared for. We were young people. We had to just muster up the courage to do what we thought was right. We said lets march. Lets picket. Well talk to strangers but racism and war. Study history, read the news, struggle to develop consensus. Make a speech, right something. We did all those things. We learned by acting. It was in that milieux that the asianamerican movement was incubated. In its essence it was an effort to say we want to be connected to our own history in america. We want to understand where we came from, what weve done. We want to learn things from our perspectives, not from the point of view of someone else and then change would needed changing. As karen mentioned, we engage in struggles in her own communities. But having that broader context made us realize quickly my con commonalities of our plight and our struggles. That led us to spawning the foot of a country called asian america. I have to skip over some parts. Think there are a lot of stories to tell. But i think if we did that and acknowledged all the activist here if we told our individual , stories, we would be here until the 4th of july. I only have 9 minutes. Probably only be minutes left. Let me just get to the lesson that i learned. Some of the lessons i have to say the asianamerican movement is a broad movement. It involved many hundreds of thousands of people across the country. There were different sectors, different tendencies. There were people who are focused on the arts come a of his son writing, fist on research, focused on activities. Organizing a lot of things. There were also differences of opinion on how to approach different questions. Even a political range from progressive. We thought of ourselves universally reformists. So there was a range politically. I happen to embrace ideas that i think are considered left. Some people call it radical, revolutionary. But that is the sector of the asian america that i worked with. So the first lesson was theory and practice. Ok. We were always skeptical about people who was all talk and no action. And we were critical of ourselves when we didnt act on our beliefs. People referred to as the insprablet of theory and ractice. When you think something had to done, you have to sum it up, learn lessons from it and move on. You couldnt do it by just sitting in the library. There was a lot of trial and error. But we acted and we tried to change and made things better. And as the actual act of being involved that taught us the lessons that we needed to learn to raise our consciousness and figure out what was right and wrong as we move forward. Thats theory and practice. Another lesson that i learned was collective action and organization. The movement was not for the most part, the aggregate of just individuals acting on their own. But it was a movement of a collective of people marching in step. It didnt mean mindlessly. It meant working together, thinking things out. But it was always a combination of standing leaders. Weve had many outstanding leaders in the movement but also many people just acting together. And sometimes we butted heads but mostly, we stood shoulder to shoulder, locked arms and marched on. For myself, for many years, i worked for worked in the movement under the collective wisdom of a disciplined organization. It provided me the guidance for my work and gave me bearings for my world view. Acked i said, none of us alone in a changed society. Acted alone in a changed society. Before karen wrote her book, there had been a handful of books about summarizing the asianamerican movement and many of us who took part in that movement are not quite satisfied feel that they accurately represent the movement that we were a part of. I think a lot of these socalled holarly books and articles attempt to provide analysis but one which is tend to be negative and dismissive of the experience of we went through. And that argument goes Something Like this. This is not a direct quote but somethings just that i wrote that sort of represents that. Asianamerican movement started out as being a good thing but as different transforms and cos colessed into the organization, the differences among them