Emily P. Lawsin (L to R) Yuri Kochiyama and Grace Lee Boggs.
ASIAN ALLIES:
THE ACTIVISM WE NEED TODAY
WHY THE ASIAN AMERICAN BATTLE AGAINST RACISM CANNOT BE COMPARTMENTALIZED. by Myra Dumapais, M.S.W.
“I
“It looked like a sieve,” he says. Over Vietnamese sandwiches and chilled yellow boxes of Chrysanthemum tea, my mentor describes what he witnessed in the late 60s about a shootout that killed a vehicle-full of Black Panthers across the street. It was a stark reminder that the Civil Rights movement was still recent, as one of my own Asian American mentors, in flesh and blood, tells the story
as if it just happened the day before. In between briefing sessions of my early community organizing days in Los Angeles, preparing to be a public speaker and volunteer coordinator, I realized that the Asian American battle against racism cannot be compartmentalized from the fight to end racism against African Americans. Even though I had not identified as a Third Culture Kid (TCK) yet, my understanding of racism at this point was from an incident of housing discrimination from a property owner in Germany, www.CultursMag.com
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