An Activist Imagination Artist’s Response to The Journey So Far

L-R: Oscar Penaranda, Min Paek, Nancy Hom and Alison Satake

Activist Imagination’s public events launched yesterday with The Journey So Far: 35 Years of Activism. The panel discussion, featuring Nancy Hom, Oscar Penaranda and Min Paek, and moderator Alison Satake, was held at the Manilatown Center.

It was my first time in the still-gleaming new building. Bob Hsiang and Nancy Hom recalled the original layout, and it was uncanny to imagine it. The Kearny Street Workshop storefront extended to where the Manilatown foyer is today. Split by a “junk shop” (according to Nancy) on the corner, KSW had a second storefront; the old Jackson Street Gallery, believe it or not, was twice as spacious as the current community room.

Hom shared her enthusiasm for KSW’s early creativity and spontaneity. She described an off-the-cuff three-day, booze-fueled animation project: a battle between McDonald’s fast food and dim sum. Allegories like these make the old days seem carefree, participatory, social. As an outsider looking in, I enjoy hearing of the absence of exclusion or dogmatism. KSW seemed to be a space for all comers.

The panel discussion was an interesting reflection on 35 years of activism. I realized, though, the past was much different than the present, and by necessity, we will shape the future on its own terms.

For example, I would have liked to differ when the conversation turned to the similarity with current events and the 1970s. The comparison seems unfair to current activists. The political upheaval in the 1960s was world-wide; imperialism was imploding in Asia and Africa. Without diminishing the credit due to ethnic studies strikers and I-Hotel activists, I see their activism as a tributary of a global current of resistance, whose groundwork was laid in prior decades. Back then, as Penaranda said, “You couldn’t help but be political.” Today, the costs of being complacent are not broadcast in the form of bodybags (which is what politicized Hom), nor brought home in draft cards (as audience member Charlie Chinn pointed out).

At the risk of mixing metaphors, here’s another analogy: consider a fulcrum of opposite forces, which swings in a struggle for power until one side gains enough momentum (or mass as a social movement) to overturn at the zenith (and cause significant social change). Maybe the revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s tipped the zenith; now, energy is waning until the conflict between opposites gains enough momentum. But we’re not even close. As David Brooks pointed out in the New York Times, “voters are desperate for change. [But] .. they don’t want a change that will upset the lives they have built for themselves.” I don’t want to make excuses for the much-disparaged apathy of our citizenry. Rather, I want to make a case for strategy.

Let’s honor the bright young people who throw themselves into non-profits for little remuneration by making it worth their time. And while we’re at it, let’s make it lucrative, so that constituents — and not just college grads — can afford righteous day jobs (and likewise, retain the other 50% of new teachers who burn out within three years). This means we have to re-think strategies and the institutions we’ve come to take for granted since the 1960s. I’m skeptical of the non-profit structure (arguably, non-profits keep us “fighting scraps instead of a seat at the table”). Today we’re on a different playing field (thanks to the advances made by our predecessors), and I’m looking forward to hearing about new strategies.

I take exception to Chinn’s position — in response to Paek’s worry about the backlash to American wars — that overseas, Asian Americans are perceived as Orientals, not Americans. While I’ve experienced that kind of essentialism, I’ve also had many more encounters to the contrary. Give people some credit — migration is not that complicated a concept. For example, given US-Philippines relations and Chinese privilege in the Philippines, Filipinos I met showed a much more nuanced understanding of ethnicity and nationality than Mr. Chinn allowed. And despite their self-described “reserve,” I met Englishmen who were quite forthcoming about their opinions of the US government. In any case, the threat of bodily harm while traveling abroad is a relative inconvenience — I’d argue that only when the costs outweigh the benefits of complacency at home, can we begin to swing the fulcrum again.

Lastly, I asked the panel to talk about the future of APA activism, and the usefulness of the term, “Asian Pacific American,” as we face economic and environmental change on a global scale. (While the term may have been coined with the 1980 Census, it’s important a framework adopted for our struggles, and the strategies of organizations like KSW.) The panelists talked about the early use of the term, which expressed the desire to be seen as a true American. While the struggle for equity continues, I think getting our piece of the American pie is too narrow a vision for the future, as the US consumption of global resources spirals out of control.But since the discussion focused on the past, I may have jumped the gun a bit. I look forward to upcoming panels on the present and future of APA activism.

Christine Wong Yap
Artist
Activist Imagination
http://www.christinewongyap.com

Join us at our first public conversation!

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Kearny Street Workshop and Manilatown Heritage Foundation present
THE JOURNEY SO FAR: 35 YEARS OF ACTIVISM
A discussion with Nancy Hom, Oscar Peñaranda, and Min Paek
Moderated by Alison Satake
an Activist Imagination event

Join Kearny Street Workshop, the Manilatown Heritage Foundation and a panel of activists, artists, and organizers for a compelling, honest, and dynamic discussion about activism, the arts and community.

The Journey So Far: 35 years of activism takes place Tuesday, November 27, at the International Hotel Manilatown Center, located at 848 Kearny Street, at Jackson. The panel features community activists, artists, and organizers Nancy Hom, Oscar Peñaranda, and Min Paek, and is moderated by author and writer Alison Satake. The discussion, which encourages questions and comments from attendees, will take a look at the last three and a half decades of activism and arts in our communities–what forms has activism taken? what methods have proven effective or ineffective? what lessons can we learn from looking back, and how can we find inspiration for the present and future of engaging in activity that effects real social and political change?

Date & Time: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 @ 7 PM

Location: International Hotel Manilatown Center, 868 Kearny Street, at Jackson, San Francisco, CA 94108

Cost: Free and open to the public.

About the moderator and panelists

Nancy Hom is an artist, writer, organizer, and arts administrator with over 30 years of experience in the non-profit arts field. Widely known for her silkscreen artwork, she has created numerous images for community events, political and social causes, and has been a graphic designer and children’s book illustrator. She is currently a freelance curator, grantwriter, and arts consultant for several small non-profits in the Bay Area. Her visual and written work has been published in numerous books and anthologies. In her 30+ years of involvement with San Francisco based Asian American arts organization Kearny Street Workshop, she served as its Executive Director from July 1995 through September 2003. She received a San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant as a visual artist in 1995. She was awarded a Gerbode Fellowship in 1998, nominated for the 1999 Women of Achievement Awards, and received the KQED Local Hero Award in 2003. She is on the boards of Heyday Institute and the Asian American Women Artists Association, and is an advisory board member of Kearny Street Workshop. She serves on the Community Arts Distribution Committee of the Zellerbach Family Foundation.

A longtime community activist, advocate for ethnic studies in the schools, teacher and writer, Oscar Peñaranda was born in Barugo, Leyte, in 1944. He attended the Philippine Normal School in Manila. At 12, his family moved to Canada, and later relocated to San Francisco, California. At San Francisco State University, Oscar graduated with a B.A. in Literature and an M.A. in Creative Writing. After graduating, he became an activist whose involvement has included participation in the longest-running student strike, which lasted from 1968 to 1969. Since then, he has spent many years teaching in northern California, including Everett Middle School and, more recently, James Logan High School in Union City, California. However, his expertise is not limited to creative writing and English composition, as his curriculum has included the teaching of Tagalog to second-generation Filipinos. Beyond the classroom, his studies in Ethnic and Filipino Heritage has spurred him to lead organizations such as the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) and the Filipino American Educators Association of California (FAEAC). Currently, Oscar has two published works, voicing his passion and life stories called Seasons by the Bay and Full Deck.

Min Paek is the founder and Executive Director of Korean American Women Artists and Writers Association (KAWAWA). In 1994, after working with Korean small store owners who lost their businesses during the 1992 L.A. Riots, Min co-founded the Inter-Cultural Youth Program with Lefty Godon of Ella Hill Hutch Community Center. Min has organized several art exhibitions, panel discussions and performances related to the Korean/Korean American experience, and has taught Asian American Culture and Contemporary Korean Community classes at San Francisco State University, and Graphic Communication classes at City College of San Francisco. Min has produced numerous educational posters and brochures, working with Tom Kim of Korean Community Service Center during the 1970s and 1980s, and is the author and illustrator of Aekyung’s Dream (Children’s Book Press. 1979), the first Korean/English bilingual children’s book published in the U.S. Presently, Min is a Ph.D. Candidate in Korean Studies with an emphasis on Art History at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her scholarly research focuses on the issues of the intersection of modernist aesthetics in the colonial and post-colonial world, the traditional and contemporary visual art and culture of Korea, diaspora and art, Asian visual culture, colonial and post-colonial cultural theory, and Asian American Art and culture. Min also has been a Commissioner since 1994 for the City and County of San Francisco.

Bay Area local, Alison Lee Satake has worked with various Bay Area non-profit organizations on issues of education, environmental justice, and media for the last seven years. Most recently, she led workshops and forums for KQED on the complex issues of modern China and U.S. immigration. An aspiring non-fiction book author, she currently is sharpening her craft at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (expected M.J. ‘09). She received her B.A. (‘98) from Barnard College in New York City.
About Manilatown Heritage Foundation

The mission of Manilatown Heritage Foundation is to promote social and economic justice for Filipinos in America by preserving our history, advocating for equal access, and advancing our arts and culture. For more information please visit www.manilatown.org.

KSW Posters: Help Requested

As part of my contribution to the Activist Imagination exhibition at KSW in 2008, I’d like to re-present color reproductions of early KSW graphic art. It would be a pleasure for me to help share KSW’s early graphic legacy in a free, public exhibition to celebrate KSW’s 35th anniversary. But first, I need your help in gathering credit information and permissions.

If you were involved with KSW in the 1970s and 1980s, I’m seeking credits and permissions for the images in the following thumbnails. Please submit a comment if you know the names of:
• Artist(s)
• Designer(s)
• Photographer(s)
• Screenprinter(s)
(Don’t forget to include the filenames of the images!)

Some dates and credits — which were provided by CEMA — appear with the thumbnails, but the majority of works lack proper attribution. As I plan to share credit information with CEMA, I, along with future researchers, will be sincerely grateful for your help.

Please click on the images to open a larger file in a new window.

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If you hold the copyrights to any of the above images, please contact me at info [at]christinewongyap.com, with “KSW archives” in the subject line.

Thank you for your help!

Sincerely,

Christine Wong Yap
Artist
Activist Imagination
http://www.christinewongyap.com

Love, Luck and Resistance: notes from tonight’s reading

Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s reading tonight at the Manilatown Heritage Center’s I Hotel gallery provided a sneak peek into her new book, God of Luck, a novel partially inspired by McCunn’s observations of Latino/a domestic laborers in her Noe Valley neighborhood – nannies, landscapers, and restaurant workers. These insights create a parallel to the characters in God of Luck: 19th century Chinese who were kidnapped and forced into labor in Latin America, and is a meditation on the very human costs that labor and industry incur.

“When I write a story about Chinese coming to America, I don’t leave behind the home country. My stories are always cross cultural even though they’re talking about the Chinese experience,” Ruth commented. She also cited her personal connection to the I-Hotel: its old bookstore was one of the first places she encountered the work of writers such as Him Mark Lai, her first introduction to Chinese American history.

Ruth’s reading included a passage detailing the brutal boat journey from Southeast China to Peru, including the barbaric strip searches and humiliating inspections and interrogations that the Chinese laborers were subjected to. While the African slave trade in the Atlantic had previously been outlawed, the Chinese slave trade carried on under the guise of “contract labor,” a thinly veiled euphemism for the human trafficking that only came to an end through the tireless efforts and endless petitions by freed Chinese living in Peru, efforts by the Chinese emperor and government officials, and through a series of mutinies launched by boatloads of the enslaves Chinese workers.

The Q&A that followed the reading focused heavily on Ruthanne’s historical sources for the God of Lucl – a majority of which were British Parliamentary papers and American diplomatic documents that she easily acquired through interlibrary loan programs. She also mentioned historical accounts that she found in the Harper’s Weekly archives, which included an in-depth report of a mutiny episode, as well as a small collection of academic work and doctoral dissertations that emerged over the course of her research.

Reflections on the KSW Archives

Last week, in my research for Activist Imagination, I viewed KSW’s early documents in the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) at UC Santa Barbara.

CEMA is part of the Davidson Library’s Special Collection. Researchers view archival materials, one box at a time, in a special climate-controlled room where cell phones, pens, water, and purses and backpacks are forbidden. Despite my culture shock upon entering UCSB’s Elysian campus (think: hundreds of beach cruiser bicycles locked only wheel-to-frame, kick stands lowered into manicured lawns), I was happy to know that KSW’s materials will be preserved for serious academic research for years to come.

I spent two days viewing half a dozen boxes brimming with KSW posters, photographs, slides, postcards, event tickets, letters, budgets and grant applications. I handled early 1970s day-glo posters with white cotton gloves. I read letters between artists of the nascent APA movement, the warmth of friendship transcending the typed business-letter style. I flipped through recent newsletters. (One 2005 newsletter featured a picture of my “Ancestors” mural, which also appeared in Artweek with a mention of Activist Imagination a few weeks ago.)

(A selection of thumbnails of posters from the KSW archives at CEMA. I would appreciate any help with gaining proper artist credits and rights for these images. Please email me if you can help.)

With so much history in the archives, browsing quickly became poring, and my two days were over too soon. But I felt as though I’ve gotten to know much more about Kearny Street’s history and idiosyncrasies, and am very inspired about re-interpreting APA activism through KSW’s evolving forms of self-representation.

For example, I learned about the Jackson Street Gallery, which shared members and a spirit of Asian community service with KSW. I was intrigued because it expanded the early role of artists beyond that of workshop leader or People’s artist. Galleries don’t just exhibit art, they provide spaces for art critical dialogues. I don’t think KSW was able to do that in the early days — after all, how does one critique work that’s collectively made, or produced by the community with the modest goal of self-expression? Galleries, on the other hand, trade in distinguishing artistic quality(ies).

Reading typewritten letters lent a sense of human connection to my experience. While the business letter style seemed stuffy, the informal vernacular of friendship and solidarity always emerged. In 1982, C.N. Lee, a New York-based APA media worker, typed the greeting, “How’s everything over there? Mellow!” in a letter to Zand Gee and Nancy Hom. In 1973, Patricia Sakai, an instructor at the Athenian School’s “Third World Experience” program, thanks KSW member [and soon-to-be executive director] Jim Dong for “taking time out of your struggle to Serve the People…” I found the praise typed on parchment letterhead to express a distant past.

The evidence of chronological distance was appealing, because it confirms the particular conditions in which KSW emerged. How KSW has evolved since (and how my work differs KSW’s early work) is inescapable. This gives me confidence to treat KSW’s past with respect and knowledge, and not simply reverent nostalgia (or irreverence). In the early days, it seemed as though one’s influence on KSW’s direction was determined by sweat equity, so I’d like to think that my contribution to KSW’s ongoing history is just as valid as that of earlier members.

This is valuable because the goal of Activist Imagination — to interpret the “past, present and future of APA activism” — can be an over-ambitious, creatively stifling mission. Unlike activism today, which can be exhaustingly totalizing (it feels like you’d need several PhDs just to keep up with so many interconnected global systems of oppression), KSW’s early work was plucky and fearless. The early collective wasn’t afraid to make mistakes, and it shows in how they represented themselves.

Early KSW printed collateral is steeped in the essence of the 1970s. Pamphlets described the early KSW organizers as Chinese American; after all, the idea of a pan-Asian and Pacific identity hadn’t yet formed. There wasn’t a term for “Asian American,” much less “APA.”

How far KSW has come can also be seen in the quintessentially Seventies programming, which included needlepoint for girls and leather work. These classes might not fly today — in either popularity or political correctness — but I believe they’re historically valuable. In Curtis Choy’s “The Fall of I-Hotel,” I saw activists characterized by sophisticated political strategy and foolproof ideological positions. But let’s not mythologize KSW’s early history; it will only magnify the inadequacy of the current state of APA activism and erase the beautiful idiosyncrasies in KSW’s past. Let’s feel the funk. Let’s let KSW’s graphic legacy include political posters as well as Leland Wong’s illustration style — the visual equivalent of a wah-wah pedal — and an unsigned screen print personifying American-Asian tolerance (it depicts Snoopy and a panda bear holding hands).

I think the iconic photographs of stoic manongs are important, as long as they don’t squeeze out the images that splinter the zeitgeists. For example, why is an unsigned, undated monochromatic screen print of Bruce Lee in a statewide archive? From the rudimentary paper stencil, I’d guess that this was made in the drop-in workshop by someone without a particular interest in conveying a strong political message. It’s not significant because as a contemporary artist in Activist Imagination, I selected it, but maybe because, in spite of its lack of overt political content, it has been selected by unknown someones as something worth keeping, over and over, in the past 30+ years? It may not fit our notions of the noble political graphics of KSW’s early days, but that doesn’t invalidate its unique currency.

As I filed through the materials, I realized: the formation of KSW and its self-representations (via manifestos, mission statements, ephemera, and graphics) could be a metonym for APA activism.

Christine Wong Yap
Visual Artist, Activist Imagination
christinewongyap.com/
cwongyap.wordpress.com/

Activist Imagination postcard image

A beautiful design by Jenifer Wofford. We sent these to press this week; keep your eyes peeled for the postcards the next time you’re at KSW, or in a local cafe or gallery!

(click on the image to see the full graphic).

Activist Imagination launches!

As part of our 35th anniversary year, KSW is proud to launch the Activist Imagination project, an exciting and unprecedented opportunity that is allowing us to commission new work from three local artists: Bob Hsiang, Donna Keiko Ozawa, and Christine Wong Yap.

Over the next seven months, KSW will be hosting a series of public events that explore past, present, and future activism through the Asian American perspective. The visual exhibition will open on February 29. Stay tuned for blog entries from the three artists, and for updates about key Activist Imagination events.