Inventing Asian America

0:07 [SPEAKER_04]: Axis Mooney. [SPEAKER_05]: When we are fighting for immigrant rights, we are fighting for the rights of all workers. [SPEAKER_05]: Immig workers built this country and all workers in this country deserve dignity and justice. [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you very much. [SPEAKER_04]: That's my father, Kent Douglas Wong, speaking at Aralee.

0:31 [SPEAKER_04]: I was 12 years old and it was my first time hearing my dad's [SPEAKER_04]: I was shocked. [SPEAKER_04]: For one thing, my dad was a mild-mannered person. [SPEAKER_04]: He got me up for school and packed me lunch every day. [SPEAKER_04]: He never raised his voice at home. [SPEAKER_04]: For another, he was Asian, born and raised in the US by Chinese American parents.

0:52 [SPEAKER_04]: At that time, Asians were stereotyped as quiet and apolitical. [SPEAKER_04]: Who was this fiery person, Yeligon stage? [SPEAKER_04]: What made him so passionate about immigrant and workers' rights? [SPEAKER_04]: Was my father a radical? [SPEAKER_04]: I spent years looking for answers to those questions.

1:11 [SPEAKER_04]: What I learned changed how I saw not only my family story, but the very roots of my identity. [SPEAKER_04]: Until 1968, we were still called Orientals. [SPEAKER_04]: Then, a group of Black Chicano and Native American students in the Bay Area went on strike. [SPEAKER_04]: They invited the Oriental students to join, who quickly decided that name was Stale.

1:38 [SPEAKER_04]: They called themselves Asian American instead. [SPEAKER_04]: Those Asian American students stood with jailed Black Panthers, helped Native organizers take over Alcatraz Island, and fought to house Elder Chakano and Filipino farm workers. [SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't just a new name, it was a new politics.

1:59 [SPEAKER_04]: Asian America meant solidarity. [SPEAKER_04]: They meant building power across racial lines. [SPEAKER_04]: In visioning a world where everyone had what they needed, [SPEAKER_04]: My parents met at UC Berkeley and they threw themselves into this new Asian-American movement. [SPEAKER_04]: They studied radical political theory and organized workers and factories.

2:22 [SPEAKER_04]: That movement spread across the country, and 50 years later, it's still how we understand ourselves. [SPEAKER_04]: The word radical means roots, and in order to explore radical Buddhism, I first had to get to the roots of Asian America, who turned Asian America from an idea into a movement?

2:43 [SPEAKER_04]: How did that movement train a generation of leaders like my father? [SPEAKER_04]: And what can those leaders teach us as we envision a more awakened future together? [SPEAKER_04]: This is radical Buddhism, claiming Asian America's Revolutionary Vision. [SPEAKER_04]: My name is Ryan Lee Wong, and in this series, I talk to leaders who inspire me.

3:22 [SPEAKER_04]: Who show me how Buddhism isn't just a way to calm our minds, but a way to transform our society. [SPEAKER_04]: I began researching the story of radical Asian America when I moved to New York after college. [SPEAKER_04]: At the time, there were only a couple of books on this history, and the Asian American movement didn't even have a Wikipedia page.

3:59 [SPEAKER_04]: I needed help, and the organizer May 10 was one of my guides. [SPEAKER_04]: She organized with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, served as Vice President of United Here, as a co-founder of the Asian Pacific American labor alliance, along with my father, and joined many grassroots efforts in New York, Chinatown.

4:30 [SPEAKER_04]: I wanted to ask May, how this Asian American movement came about, how it intersected with the log history of American labor organizing. [SPEAKER_04]: And I asked her about a major strike in 1982, one that changed the course of both the labor and Asian-American movements. [SPEAKER_04]: What was the difference between being Chinese-American versus Asian-American?

5:02 [SPEAKER_04]: And can you even recall the first time or the first context where you heard that term, Asian-American? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, there was an Asian-American conference at Yale. [SPEAKER_02]: I think it was in 1969. [SPEAKER_02]: And I was in college at that time. [SPEAKER_02]: And so I went down to...

5:20 [SPEAKER_02]: participate in that conference. [SPEAKER_02]: And I think the Asian American idea was recently coined. [SPEAKER_02]: For me as a Chinese American, especially from an immigrant family, it seemed very odd, because the various countries of Asia often fought with each other. [SPEAKER_02]: Didn't get along.

5:41 [SPEAKER_02]: My mother was very, very anti-Japanese because of growing up during World War II. [SPEAKER_02]: was a new thing which made sense because Asians had some common experience like we're always being asked, what are you? [SPEAKER_02]: Where where did you come from? [SPEAKER_02]: And I was felt very uncomfortable with that because I was born in the United States.

6:05 [SPEAKER_02]: I had never really, I had never been to Asia at that point, so it just seemed like we were always treated like a foreigner. [SPEAKER_04]: So one I'm hearing is Chinese American was something you kind of grew up with as a given and then when you got to college Asian American was actually this new political identity that's right and in our Asian American student groups we were [SPEAKER_02]: fighting against the Vietnam War from the perspective that this was a war in Asia that having friends who were drafted into the armed forces and being held up as an example of what the enemy is gonna look like, you know, there was some very racialized and racist aspects to the war and that's why it's Asian Americans, it kind of brought many of us, even though we had different nationality backgrounds

7:02 [SPEAKER_04]: One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, two, three, one, two [SPEAKER_04]: And then all of a sudden, you were part of these first Asian American studies classes, this whole new discipline in academia, the first Asian American anthology.

7:34 [SPEAKER_04]: How aware were you at the time that you were actually creating something new, creating a new identity? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, we were aware because we had to create materials to justify teaching classes. [SPEAKER_02]: And they had to have a certain quality. [SPEAKER_02]: So I think the people who started that program at UCLA were aware and were trying to eventually become a department or [SPEAKER_02]: to get classes approved by the university.

8:04 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I was a graduate student. [SPEAKER_02]: So we had a lot of people like myself who didn't have doctorates. [SPEAKER_02]: We're not, you know, full-fledged scholars at that time starting out these programs. [SPEAKER_02]: So it was really the Wild West. [SPEAKER_02]: We were just getting started, but we were very dedicated and committed to getting this going and to find ways to keep it going.

8:30 [SPEAKER_02]: because there were Asian American students who in some cases were the first ones going to college from their families. [SPEAKER_04]: I actually want to go back to something you mentioned, which was teaching the first class on Asian American women. [SPEAKER_04]: What were some of the unique issues facing Asian American women and what did you talk about in that class?

8:49 [SPEAKER_02]: It was formed in part by kind of a feminist idea that Asians and women of color in the United States face a triple jeopardy of being women, of being people of color, and also class issues like being working class or coming from families that were not well off and had to struggle to get by.

9:12 [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, in the class, we've created a lot of material because based on the lived experiences, the oral histories of the students, we were able to write up stories of Asian women. [SPEAKER_02]: And this began to inform and to create material for to stage American studies generally. [SPEAKER_02]: So we dealt with [SPEAKER_02]: issues related to stereo types, women who came from war-torn countries of Vietnam more and the impact of American GIs going to various countries, whether it was Japan, during World War II, Korea, and then the Vietnam more and so on, and in China as well.

10:02 [SPEAKER_02]: And then we dealt with the issues of sexism that are somewhat ingrained in some of our own cultures and traditions, like the real male-chovenistic orientation of some of the Asian cultures and how women were addressing that and changing that. [SPEAKER_02]: And then workplace issues because a lot of Asian women have always been in the workforce as immigrants [SPEAKER_04]: So that's a great segue into talking about your move back to New York.

10:36 [SPEAKER_04]: Tell me how you became involved in the labor organizing. [SPEAKER_02]: When I was in college, I had been a supporter of the farm workers. [SPEAKER_02]: And Cecil Shavis came to speak on my campus and I had some friends who went to work in Delano, California after college. [SPEAKER_02]: And so I had the opportunity to visit them.

11:01 [SPEAKER_02]: in the farmworker, you know, camps and so on, so I was interested in that history and particularly the Asian part of it because, you know, it's filled very crews and Larry Leong and a lot of the Filipino monongs were very active in the United Farm Workers Union. [SPEAKER_02]: The Filipino farm workers worked in a lot of fields in the same areas of California as the [SPEAKER_02]: Mejcanoes, and they also had the experience of exploitation and strungle, and so there were leaders that led job actions and strikes among the Filipinos, and then also reached out to work with the Mexican farm workers, to build alliances.

12:12 [SPEAKER_02]: But it was more from the community angle. [SPEAKER_02]: is in Los Angeles, they had work teams that went to build agbionic village. [SPEAKER_02]: That's a retirement housing, I think, for the Filipino farm workers. [SPEAKER_02]: And so I went up to Delano for a building session, and you know, there was a lot of community and labor projects like that.

12:43 [SPEAKER_04]: And what do you think was so inspiring to you and to so many others about the farm work movement? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's just the intersection between their communities and their ethnic culture and their identity and struggles as workers. [SPEAKER_02]: I think that was very, very important to me.

13:06 [SPEAKER_02]: And then when I came to New York, obviously, [SPEAKER_02]: with the garment workers, there was that kind of understanding and the intersection between the community and labor just was so powerful. [SPEAKER_04]: So I wanted to pause and paint a picture of what was going on in New York City and in particular New York Chinatown in the 1970s.

13:32 [SPEAKER_04]: So of course, the 1965 Immigration Act really opened up the door as to immigration in a major way New York Chinatown was changing rapidly, the population was swelling. [SPEAKER_04]: And my understanding is many of these Chinese immigrants the men turned to restaurant work as an economic niche and many women turned to garment.

13:53 [SPEAKER_02]: You had this large and growing population of workers. [SPEAKER_02]: The men who worked in restaurants were organizing into the restaurant unions and the women [SPEAKER_02]: were fortunate to have inherited a union that had very strong industrial strength to they've got benefits and they've got rights like to have representation to complain if there was a problem.

14:21 [SPEAKER_04]: So even a few years before you moved to New York, you know, 1975, there was this major [SPEAKER_04]: march against police brutality, a general strike in Chinatown, and the headlines at the time would say things like Asian-Americans, one silent, no longer. [SPEAKER_04]: So kind of this prevailing assumption that Asian-Americans were a political that they were not involved in politics or government or issues like policing.

14:46 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, another big struggle in Chinatown was a housing campaign called [SPEAKER_02]: and you've had all of these immigrants who became squatters in these tenant buildings. [SPEAKER_02]: And what I found very fascinating is at that time, you know, the Eworkun had formed in Chinatown and there was a young Lord's party and there was a Black Panther's party.

15:12 [SPEAKER_02]: And there was a housing hearing, co-sponsored by these three radical organizations. [SPEAKER_02]: who were squatting, were Chinese immigrants. [SPEAKER_02]: It was exciting to meet some of the grassroots people and to work together to organize them. [SPEAKER_02]: I did a rent strike in Henry Street and Chinatown.

15:41 [SPEAKER_02]: And we had three buildings, a same landlord. [SPEAKER_02]: It was like 1980 in the winter. [SPEAKER_02]: and the landlord just wouldn't fix the boilers and, you know, there were a lot of old people living on those buildings. [SPEAKER_02]: It was really suffering. [SPEAKER_02]: So in those buildings, we organized a rent strike.

16:00 [SPEAKER_02]: And in each building, we had meetings with all the tenants and we got each building to elect a couple of representatives. [SPEAKER_02]: And they did that, and these representatives just made sure that, you know, everybody was informed about the different steps of the, we're making a complaint to the city and so on and putting our rent into a escrow count and all that kind of stuff.

16:27 [SPEAKER_02]: And we eventually won that strike, but we actually have to go and we had to sit in at the landlords office in Chinatown. [SPEAKER_02]: This is a Chinese landlord. [SPEAKER_02]: and he was very shocked when we see him. [SPEAKER_02]: He still talks about it today, but we got past that, you know, we made peace.

16:50 [SPEAKER_04]: I love the story because the group you work who you mentioned, which loosely translates to the righteous fists, the young lords, the Black Panthers, kind of, these groups really remembered as these militant kind of far-left organizations. [SPEAKER_04]: And at the same time, they were all a, number one, united across racial lines and b in this example really focused on these bread and butter issues facing the community so it wasn't all just big militant rhetoric and displays of politics but actually quote unquote serving the people right going into the communities and doing basic community organizing and I think that's a really interesting [SPEAKER_04]: No, as we tell the story of kind of leftist Asian American politics, the politics of the 1970s.

17:41 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think the solidarity across ethnic groups has always been a very important goal that I held after living through all these things, especially today, people need to pay attention to how to build that kind of solidarity [SPEAKER_04]: When I first learned how close those Asian-American activists were to the black panthers and young lords, I was shocked.

18:15 [SPEAKER_04]: Were those groups militant radicals? [SPEAKER_04]: Were they trying to bring down America? [SPEAKER_00]: You were after said that I am a voluntary. [SPEAKER_00]: I am the people. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not the big. [SPEAKER_00]: You got to make a distinction. [SPEAKER_00]: And the people are going to have to attack the B.

18:28 [SPEAKER_00]: The people are going to have to stand up against the B. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what the power is doing. [SPEAKER_00]: That's what the power is doing all over the world. [SPEAKER_04]: I read a little more and realized that though those groups did call for revolution, what made them popular was that they served their communities.

18:44 [SPEAKER_04]: The thousands of free breakfasts, the Panthers cooked, the health services, the young lords provided. [SPEAKER_04]: The rent strike may talk about. [SPEAKER_04]: Many in that generation, including my father and me, had a similar realization as the [SPEAKER_04]: America wasn't ready for a revolution but it was ready for action and to move that action forward they needed a base and the most powerful base around was organized labor.

19:17 [SPEAKER_04]: We've covered the origins of the Asian American movement. [SPEAKER_04]: Next, I wanted to ask May how she helped merge this new Asian American identity with the powerful [SPEAKER_04]: can you just talk a little bit about what were some of the issues facing these garment workers, most of them women, most of them Chinese-American, most of them immigrants?

19:47 [SPEAKER_04]: What were they facing on a day-to-day basis on their jobs? [SPEAKER_02]: There were five or six hundred factories in Chinatown, [SPEAKER_02]: became a very important factor in the New York sportswear industry because these were factories where they could produce clothes quickly and the radio to wear, you know, a lot of basic garments.

20:15 [SPEAKER_02]: The women themselves, many of them had children, some of them had to bring kids to the factory after work because there is no [SPEAKER_02]: Take care of services or after school care services. [SPEAKER_02]: We have to fight for that and eventually we're successful in getting a lot more programs going.

20:34 [SPEAKER_02]: They've worked for a piecework, wages, which meant that if you're a zipper so or how many zippers you sewed, add it up together, that's your wage. [SPEAKER_02]: Some of them brought skills into the factory, but some of them had never worked in a factory before and so they had to learn very quickly and get up to speed.

20:55 [SPEAKER_02]: But the factories gave them a new social environment, like to meet a lot of friends to learn more about New York City, Chinatown, you know, where you get the best bargains and whatnot, and being in a union factory, they had health insurance provided, which was one of the most important issues to these women, and which spurred a lot of them to support the 1982 strike.

21:21 [SPEAKER_02]: not just for themselves but for their kids. [SPEAKER_02]: The women basically had to manage kind of household needs because the men, many of them who worked in restaurants, they worked very late at night, some of them worked in restaurants that were not in the city so they had to stay in a dormitory near the restaurant and they just come home once a week when they had a day off.

21:44 [SPEAKER_02]: So this was the life of the immigrants at that time, not an easy life. [SPEAKER_02]: They benefited a lot from the contact and the solidarity that got built among the people and the shops and the family of workers. [SPEAKER_04]: We're often told that immigrants and non-English speakers are hard groups to organize.

22:10 [SPEAKER_04]: But what I'm hearing from your description is at the same time, there's actually this very high level of political and labor savvy, where these women actually really understood the importance of things like health care and how being unionized could actually be key to getting these basic benefits.

22:32 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, the immigrants are very practical and so when there is something there that's going to improve their lives because they all came here for better life for their kids, for themselves, for their families. [SPEAKER_02]: They're going to grab onto that, and they're not going to just give it up.

22:54 [SPEAKER_02]: And in a way, that's what the strike taught is, but the ILGWU also had a culture from [SPEAKER_02]: kind of yiddish socialism, I guess, called social unionism. [SPEAKER_02]: And so they believed strongly that you don't just address people's workplace issues in a vacuum. [SPEAKER_02]: You have to also deal with their community, their family.

23:22 [SPEAKER_02]: And this was a union of immigrants. [SPEAKER_02]: So in every wave of different immigrant groups, [SPEAKER_02]: meet with the workers, encourage them higher activists from the workers themselves who knew how to talk to people and address any social or other issues that were out there. [SPEAKER_02]: So through that kind of method of organizing with the grassroots, that's what led to the success of the union and of the strike.

23:58 [SPEAKER_04]: One other piece of organizing that I wanted to touch on, because I think it's not talked about enough when you tell movement histories is food. [SPEAKER_04]: And I think this is especially true in a lot of immigrant communities, a lot of Asian-American communities, how important food is in terms of bringing people together and actually forming connections person to person.

24:20 [SPEAKER_04]: And in particular, you have this great story about C.O. [SPEAKER_04]: Guy, which is a soy sauce chicken. [SPEAKER_04]: It's dish, I grew up eating my dad would make. [SPEAKER_04]: But in the context of organizing, it actually had a double meaning. [SPEAKER_04]: Can you talk about that story?

24:33 [SPEAKER_02]: In New York, China town, C.L. [SPEAKER_02]: Guy was an idiom in the factories that meant easy work and peace rates that paid them a lot of money, and they could really make out. [SPEAKER_02]: So when they said, oh, we're making C.L. [SPEAKER_02]: Guy, we have a lot of bundles, a really good work, and it's sweet and tasty, and it's going to make us rich.

25:04 [SPEAKER_02]: some of the kids of the garment workers told stories of going to union trips and picnics where you had all these different ethnic groups and everybody had their blanket and their food set out and and these kids would go from place to place like trading food and trying all the food of the other ethnic groups because they you know they wouldn't get that then [SPEAKER_04]: through it as a connector.

25:36 [SPEAKER_04]: So, all of these issues started to culminate and move towards a strike in 1982. [SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell me what precipitated that's- Well, the strike was about the renewal of the Union contract. [SPEAKER_02]: Like every three years, the contract has the negotiation and renewal. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's negotiated industry-wide, like all around New York, as well as [SPEAKER_02]: Pennsylvania Massachusetts.

26:05 [SPEAKER_02]: And so the contract was essentially settled except there was a small group of Chinese employers who decided that they wanted to fight with the union and try to get rid of the union because they felt like in the Chinese community, we should just do things in a Chinese way and you don't need this foreign institution the union interfering in their business.

26:32 [SPEAKER_02]: And I have to say it was not the majority of the owners, but they were loud enough so that the rest of the owners said, okay, okay, you know, see how far this goes. [SPEAKER_02]: And so they did a lot of publicity in the press and they said, we're not going to sign this contract. [SPEAKER_02]: And at one point, they actually even walked the workers out.

26:53 [SPEAKER_02]: There was a lockout. [SPEAKER_02]: the contract expired on June 30th. [SPEAKER_02]: So in the months of April, May and June, this whole organizing effort was building up. [SPEAKER_02]: The workers for their part were really angry that the employers would want to take away [SPEAKER_02]: you know, they're right to Union benefits.

27:15 [SPEAKER_02]: There was a big pushback by the workers in the community, and as the workers began to push back, and there was a war of words like in the Chinese newspapers in radio, and then we had workers from other parts of the industry like non-Chinese workers. [SPEAKER_02]: who came to the rallies to support the workers.

27:35 [SPEAKER_02]: So it was a display of solidarity among the workers themselves and then kind of an ethnic solidarity in getting the contract resolved. [SPEAKER_02]: There were two major demonstrations in the end of June and one in July, which was [SPEAKER_02]: the so-called strike deadline. [SPEAKER_02]: And if the employers did not all sign by that deadline in July, there really would be a full-fledged strike.

28:06 [SPEAKER_02]: But it turned out that there was only a few shops that hadn't signed and we picked it in front of those shops and then the employer signed. [SPEAKER_02]: And then the last employee, there was a story of, he had run away from his factory and was kind of hiding out someplace. [SPEAKER_02]: But one of the workers knew where he always had dim sum every day.

28:28 [SPEAKER_02]: And so they brought a whole group of workers up to that dim sum restaurant. [SPEAKER_02]: And he was there, sure enough. [SPEAKER_02]: And they had the paper with them and they said, hey, you've got a sign, and so he signed and the strike was, [SPEAKER_04]: result. [SPEAKER_04]: That's amazing.

28:44 [SPEAKER_04]: Food again key to securing organizing victories. [SPEAKER_04]: I actually want to touch on something you mentioned, which is I didn't know this part of the story that some of these shop owners were saying, oh, we don't need unions because, you know, we're all Chinese can't resettle this amongst ourselves.

29:01 [SPEAKER_04]: So actually, hitting class solidarity against racial [SPEAKER_04]: And I think that's a really interesting moment, which clearly the worker is on the whole rejected. [SPEAKER_04]: And so can you talk about that lesson of, you know, what happens when maybe owners or management tries to break those apart and how we bring them back together again?

29:27 [SPEAKER_02]: When we organize the workers, the workers solve people who looked like them. [SPEAKER_02]: So this whole idea of ethnic solidarity just seemed very false to them, because they knew that a lot of these employers really just wanted to exploit them, take away a lot of their rights and benefits.

29:48 [SPEAKER_02]: But this is a continuing tension that always exists in ethnic community [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we're all Chinese and we're going to stick together or are there issues that go beyond that because like Chinatowns were formed as a defense because the Chinese were being lynched and killed and you know, and so they formed these Chinatown communities as a protection and as a way to defend themselves from being under attack and [SPEAKER_02]: trying to figure out who are really our friends or enemies is always an issue.

30:29 [SPEAKER_02]: And both within the community, like Huchen, we really trust, and who is just trying to exploit us, or going beyond the community, what are the institutions that are really our friends or are trying to use us or take advantage of us? [SPEAKER_04]: And so you mentioned a couple of these massive rallies that happened in Chinatown and Columbus Park in the summer of 1982.

30:58 [SPEAKER_04]: And folks like the great photographer, quirky Lee, captured those rallies. [SPEAKER_04]: And they're really striking photos. [SPEAKER_04]: I remember the first time I saw them because they're mostly women. [SPEAKER_04]: They're mostly Chinese, and they're mostly middle-aged and elderly.

31:15 [SPEAKER_04]: And these are all categories of people you don't think of as protesting. [SPEAKER_04]: But they're all out there in solidarity with their ILGW union caps on wearing white, holding fans and picket signs. [SPEAKER_01]: We work with in China, Pat, oh no, and understand the best. [SPEAKER_01]: How hard we have to work just to make a living.

31:36 [SPEAKER_04]: It's a really remarkable display. [SPEAKER_04]: of this intersection of garment work, women's rights, labor rights. [SPEAKER_04]: Can you talk about the feeling in the air in those days? [SPEAKER_04]: And what was like to see these massive rallies? [SPEAKER_02]: It was very exciting, but also very tense.

32:00 [SPEAKER_02]: Like the union leaders, we're not sure until moments before the rallies started. [SPEAKER_02]: that these workers would actually come out. [SPEAKER_02]: You know, if you talk to people like Katie Clawn, who worked in a factory at that time, and other workers, they had their own plan. [SPEAKER_02]: They were meeting in the factory, and then at the right time at the signal, they would all turn off their machines, get up.

32:28 [SPEAKER_02]: and go in mass to Columbus Park. [SPEAKER_02]: So the Union leaders talk about worrying down to last minute and then suddenly there's this huge wave of workers coming from Canal Street and from all the streets where the factories were and flooding into Columbus Park until it was totally full.

32:48 [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, meeting today is the largest ever now in the history of Pana Park. [SPEAKER_02]: And for the workers themselves, I mean, it was very exciting. [SPEAKER_02]: They'd never done anything like this before. [SPEAKER_02]: Many of them would never have been to a demonstration. [SPEAKER_02]: But they were there with their friends that they trusted and their coworkers.

33:16 [SPEAKER_02]: And many of them said that, you know, my sister asked me to come, so of course I'm here. [SPEAKER_02]: But you know, this is a really normally do this. [SPEAKER_04]: So the last thing I wanted to ask you about is continuing this legacy of labor organizing meeting the Asian American movement.

33:36 [SPEAKER_04]: A few years after that strike, the Asian Pacific American labor alliance was founded. [SPEAKER_04]: It became an affiliate of the AFL CIO. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, of course, you're a dad played a major role in this. [SPEAKER_02]: But I got involved in it because Jay Mazer, who was the president of the ILGW at that point, he was the one who was the Union officer who led the Chinatown Strike for the Union.

34:16 [SPEAKER_02]: And then for him after that, he was promoted to become the international president of the ILG. [SPEAKER_02]: It's a little bit of a chicken and egg, I think your dad was working the country and [SPEAKER_02]: specifically for Asian Americans. [SPEAKER_02]: And in his meetings with the AFL and around the country, the AFL realized that they should do something.

34:44 [SPEAKER_02]: And so they asked Jay Mazer who's on the executive council of the AFL to chair a committee to look into the formation of this Asian group. [SPEAKER_02]: And then Jay [SPEAKER_02]: So we had what was called a steering committee, which had, you know, a couple dozen Asians that they found from around the country, from different unions.

35:15 [SPEAKER_02]: And we met to set up a structure for Apollo. [SPEAKER_02]: And then eventually we had a founding convention in 1992. [SPEAKER_02]: and foreign liqueur and your dad was the first president and I was his first vice president. [SPEAKER_02]: So I was lucky to work with Kent closely on Apollo.

35:39 [SPEAKER_04]: And just for folks who are less familiar with the larger labor movement at the time, can you talk about why this was significant within the larger AFL CIO? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I have to say it was a real experience because when we first sat down to have these discussions and meetings at the A.B.L.C.I.O.

36:00 [SPEAKER_02]: we were in some meeting room that had all these pictures and medallions for people who were very anti-Asian, like the ones who led the anti-Chinese movements and stuff like that. [SPEAKER_02]: And so we were all looking around thinking, [SPEAKER_02]: these guys are returning over in their grave to see this group of us, but it was important because more and more Asians were immigrating to this country and were one of the fastest growing ethnic groups and the unions needed to be able to reach out and organize these workers and to [SPEAKER_02]: You know, address the exploitation that many of them are facing in the workplace.

36:48 [SPEAKER_02]: So it was good that we had this group of several dozen activists talking about how to form a group. [SPEAKER_02]: And there were four or five hundred people at the founding convention, which was in Washington, D.C., and happened to coincide with the Ronnie King case in LA. [SPEAKER_02]: so we had a big march and rally and it was just very politically charged times but gave us as Asians opportunity to organize and to create our own group where we could speak up and we could encourage more other Asians to become part of the labor movement.

37:46 [SPEAKER_04]: It's sort of going back to that other question of when identities are pitted against each other. [SPEAKER_04]: So for so long, the labor movement actually had an identity of being anti-Asian. [SPEAKER_04]: This whole narrative that Chinese were coming to take American jobs, white American jobs.

38:04 [SPEAKER_04]: A lot of labor movement leaders supporting the Chinese exclusion act and similar kind of racist immigration laws. [SPEAKER_04]: And so what I'm hearing is that this was a moment of again kind of breaking that false dichotomy and saying, no, we can be Asian American and part of the labor movement.

38:22 [SPEAKER_02]: That's right. [SPEAKER_02]: That's right. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that Asians are Americans. [SPEAKER_02]: and we belong here and we need to be together working in solidarity with all the other groups that have common cause. [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much, me. [SPEAKER_06]: We deploy the sense of small links in the sense of killings.

38:52 [SPEAKER_06]: It is time for our communities to get organized. [SPEAKER_06]: It is time for Asian-American and African-Americans and Latinos. [SPEAKER_06]: And by working people to get together. [SPEAKER_06]: And it is time to force a common agenda. [SPEAKER_06]: There was a feat, the George Bushes, was a feat, the Clarence Thomases, was a flea.

39:12 [SPEAKER_06]: It's tax on our civil rights, the attacks on affirmative action, the attacks on the standard of living in the American people. [SPEAKER_04]: That's my dad again, speaking at the founding of the Asian-Pacific American labor alliance in Washington, D.C. in 1992. [SPEAKER_04]: And I can hear the idealism and anger in his voice.

39:38 [SPEAKER_04]: He echoes so much of what mattered to me, cross-racial solidarity, and the need to defend our rights against those who would divide us. [SPEAKER_04]: For years, my father's friends and colleagues had been training as leaders in the Asian-American movement. [SPEAKER_04]: They learned how to stand in front of a crowd and get people's attention to channel the frustration of working people into action.

40:02 [SPEAKER_04]: They saw that many American workers were Asian and most Asian Americans were workers. [SPEAKER_04]: The Asian American movement was only the start. [SPEAKER_04]: In order for Asian America to thrive, it meant standing at the heart of America's labor movement and bridging workers' rights with immigrant rights, women's rights, and racial justice.

40:25 [SPEAKER_04]: I had to understand all these histories to understand my dad. [SPEAKER_04]: I'm glad I did, because my father passed away last year, not yet 70 years old. [SPEAKER_04]: The labor movement and Los Angeles gave him a hero's farewell, and a thousand people gathered to celebrate his life. [SPEAKER_04]: My father had gone from a young idealist, challenging power, to a movement leader, helping people use their power.

40:52 [SPEAKER_04]: He'd gone from being called an oriental, [SPEAKER_04]: to demanding his dignity as an Asian-American, then insisting that Asian-Americans sit at the heart of American social movements. [SPEAKER_04]: To me, his life stands as an example that leaders are not born but made. [SPEAKER_04]: My mother pointed out in the last episode that Buddhism and organizing both believe in our capacity to change.

41:21 [SPEAKER_04]: As we explore Buddhism in this series, I want to remember how radical it was to create Asian America in the first place. [SPEAKER_04]: How that movement represents the ideals of transformation, dignity, and compassion that are so central to Buddhism as well. [SPEAKER_04]: Faith helps us move past politics, but it's always grounded in specific struggles in particular histories.

41:44 [SPEAKER_07]: For the first time in history, we have our very own organization within the House of Labor, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. [SPEAKER_07]: The signals in New Era for our Asian American workers across the country, it was strengthened, the organizing of the unorganized, it was strengthened the bridges between the Asian-American community and the labor movement, and it will begin to advance in agenda that represents the interests of all working people in this country.

42:14 [SPEAKER_04]: In the next episode, I'll explore the history of engaged Buddhism further. [SPEAKER_04]: We'll dive into how painful histories of shape us and also how you might use ritual to move past cycles of violence. [SPEAKER_04]: Join me next time on Radical Buddhism. [SPEAKER_04]: Radical Buddhism is a production of Axis Mindy Media and made possible by a grant from the Henry Loose Foundation which seeks to deepen public knowledge of religion.

42:50 [SPEAKER_04]: Andrew Gil is the producer with a original music by Scott Okamoto. [SPEAKER_04]: The Barry Center for Buddhist Studies is our fiscal sponsor. [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks so much for listening. [UNKNOWN]: Thank you.