[00:01:50] Miko: The Civil Liberties Project is actually through APEX Express, which is a radio show on KPFA.APEX Express is a collective of Asian American Pacific Islander radio folks that want to tell progressive stories about our community. There are a lot of folks that banded together and said, "Pacific Radio, we want shows that are created by and for BIPOC folks." Basically, at KPFA, which is the Berkeley station and the original station of Pacifica Radio, essentially every weeknight at 7:00 PM is a different BIPOC show. There's an indigenous one, there's La Raza, there's an African-American one, and we are the Asian Pacific Islander one called APEX Express. Thursday nights at seven o'clock.

It's a collective of folks that run APEX, and I do a show specifically with my daughter. We look at intergenerational issues and the impacts. Also, I will honestly say that started with my daughter saying to me, "Mom, what does old Twitter say today?" [laughs] We would joke about it from our different perspectives, what we were seeing and what was the perspective. That's actually how it started. I was really inspired by an amazing organization called Tsuru for Solidarity that was doing this work with Japanese American elders that are formerly incarcerated. 80 and 90-year-olds that were going down to the detention centers in Texas where they were held and protesting the fact that migrant kids were being held at those same centers.

In Crystal City, Texas, this center held Geronimo, and then it held incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II. Then they were refurbishing it to hold immigrant kids and the elders said, "No, never again. We cannot let this happen." My daughter, Jalena, and I were all set to get on the bus and go down to Crystal City and all of these things happened. We ended up not being able to go, but the elders just inspired by… I want to be able to be feisty like that, [chuckles] to be 80 and 90-year-old and still get on that bus and saying never again.

Number one, just protesting that. Their pain that they went through, and that one facility specifically held incarcerated Japanese Latin Americans, which is one of the lesser told stories about the incarceration. The over 3,000 Japanese Latin Americans that were kidnapped from their homes in Peru, in Panama. It is just such a horrific story. They were incarcerated specifically at Crystal City, which is one of the federal detention camps. They were held there. When the release happened and Japanese Americans were allowed to go home, they didn't have a home to go to because they couldn't go back to their Latin American countries of which they had been disowned. They were not considered American citizens, so they were saying, "Now what?"

Those folks also did not get reparations. They did not get the $20,000 and the apology. Many, many fights later, some folks got $5,000 and a kind of apology. Then some folks fought it all the way to the United Nations. Of course, they won their case, but still, there was not an official apology to the Japanese Latin Americans, and never by the Latin American Governments that made this happen. It was a prisoner for exchange program. My daughter and I were inspired by these stories of these elders.

Working on behalf of immigrant kids, they were able to not just tell the pain of their stories, but also incorporate it in this way that at the end of each of their protests led by the amazing psychologist, Dr. Satsuki Ina, they held healing circles where after they would protest, they would sit in a circle together and share what they were going through so that they weren't re-traumatizing themselves and that they could be able to continue to do this work. There's so much beautiful learnings there. Initially, this whole Never Again project that my daughter and I did was honoring these elders, honoring this deep commitment toward change over multiple generations. That's how it got started.

We ended up doing multiple-- We did seven different episodes. We have a study guide, and we're working on a website that we will be unveiling soon. Each of the episodes are utilizing our back-and-forth, looking at generations and our approach. We did a whole series of different episodes, the missing in-- As Helen Zia always talks about what are the MIH, the missing in history stories. We try and tell some of those missing in history stories. We did an episode about women in the camps because there are not that many stories that are specifically focused on the really difficult experiences that some of the women had to go through, like even just going to the bathroom at night in those latrines and how scary that could be, and what was reporting looking like when it was potentially a guard or a relative or a neighbor. There were no systems set up for the women in those camps. It was very dangerous.

We looked at intergenerational trauma and healing and the processes of that, and we were able to talk to people like Dr. Satsuki Ina who made an amazing film called Children of the Camps, about pulling together sensei folks to be able to talk about what their experiences were like. We talked about reparations with John Tateishi who wrote an amazing book on this. We are actually in the process right now of developing a workshop with Black Lives Matter at school looking at reparations from the Japanese-American internment and how that can be applied to current reparations movements with African-American and Indigenous folks.

We know some of that work has already been going down like the Tsuru for Solidarity in Chicago worked really closely with Black Lives Matter to be able to get a reparations passed. The first one in the country for Black folks in Chicago. We were able to cover a story on reparations. We wanted to do stories that we felt looked at the history, looked at the wrongs, the never agains in our history, and how we can apply them to what is happening now, and how we can take action and utilize that harmful history to be able to learn a lesson and move forward.

APEX Express is part of a larger network, which is called AACRE, which is Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality, and that's a network of 11 different AAPI progressive groups, including Chinese for Affirmative Action, which is actually the grandmother of all of our groups. Chinese for Affirmative Action started over 50 years ago. It started really in the time when there was so much going on in our country, and it was folks fighting for ethnic studies, fighting for civil rights, fighting for free speech, for accessibility, for all of these issues to make sure that people had equal access. That's how Chinese for Affirmative Action was born, by students saying, "We believe that affirmative action is a critical component to being an American and what an American stands for."

Civil rights was a core to the issue for Chinese for Affirmative Action. While the organization was founded mostly by Chinese Americans, it quickly grew to be cross-racial in terms of different kinds of Asian ethnicities.

[00:10:08] Jon-Barrett: Annie Lee is the director of policy for Chinese for Affirmative Action. As a former US History teacher, Annie shares a brief history of Chinese Americans and how their story connects with other marginalized groups and the struggles they have faced as they fight for equity in this country.

[00:10:27] Annie: The first big wave of Chinese people coming to the United States came during the gold rush. That was not just a big influx of Chinese people, but a big influx from around the world because gold was discovered in California and folks wanted to come. Allegedly, you could pick up gold in just any old river in California. Scores and scores of people from around the world, including from China came to California, and you could immediately start to see race play into how people were stratified in society, and where people were allowed to live. Just the treatment of different people, including then folks from China.

Chinese, like many other people, remained in California after the gold rush boom. As nativism started to grow in the United States toward the end of the 1800s, you can start to see that reflected in our laws. Many people cite the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 but actually, the Page Act of 1875 first prohibited the entry of Chinese women. You can also see not just the racial element to our history, but a gendered element. The idea that if you don't allow Chinese women over, then Chinese people can be here, they can't have families, they cannot procreate and settle down and have roots here, that was why the Page Act was passed and then followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which has suspended Chinese immigration and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization.

You can see it in the history of San Francisco, which is my hometown but it happens to many, many minority groups including Jews in the lower East side in New York, but the ghettoization in specific parts of the community where people can live. That happens in Chinatown during the earthquake. The fires, which really destroyed the city in 1906. You could also see the implications of just the second-class nature of Chinese in San Francisco.

Actually, one thing that I really want to point out is that during the late 1800s, during this history of oppressing Chinese and Chinese Americans, there was also resistance. I think that this history so beautifully ties in all of the accomplishments and sacrifice of the Black community. As a US History teacher, I think reconstruction is one of the most important times in US history. During that time, the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments were passed.

The 14th Amendment includes a couple of key elements including birthright citizenship because African Americans were not considered citizens at the time, and the idea of equal protection. Those were enshrined in the 14th Amendment. What really gave those principles meat were two cases brought by Chinese people. Yick Wo is an enormously important case in American history in which there was a race-neutral law in San Francisco about laundromats. It didn't single out Chinese people, but it was only applied against Chinese laundries and penalizing them.

That case went all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court found that that violated equal protection under the 14th Amendment. So much of our equal protection law derives from this case, which is about selective enforcement of a racially neutral law. You can see Black and Asian communities working together to advance civil rights for everyone. Then the other case I want to highlight is the Wong Ark Kim case which establishes birthright citizenship that was already in the 14th Amendment but when you had this man, Wong Kim Ark who was born in San Francisco to parents who were Chinese citizens, or Chinese nationals, and then he left and wanted to come back and folks wouldn't allow him.

The court found that actually, no, he was born in San Francisco, which means that he is a US citizen. That case is hugely influential for millions of Americans today, including myself. I was born to parents who I'm not even sure they naturalized by the time I was born in San Francisco, but that builds on the 14th Amendment, which again, was a result of the Civil War.

[00:14:39] Jon-Barrett: There was a moment where Asian Americans were pitted against each other. In 1942, executive order 9066 was passed. 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated, abandoning everything that they had built here, and then a year later the Chinese Exclusion Act ended with the Magnuson Act which allowed for Chinese to come to the United States to work here in small numbers because China was our ally in World War II. You have one subgroup incarcerated, and then we're opening the door for the other and then switching again depending on what America needed at that time.

[00:15:32] Annie: Correct. There were Chinese Americans during World War II that would wear pins that said, "I'm not Japanese." Trying to distinguish themselves and spare themselves the horrible treatments that Japanese Americans were experiencing at the time. But I think that the case of Vincent Chin explains precisely why we need to stand together with other Asian American subgroups. Vincent Chin, as folks may know, was a Chinese American in Detroit and out celebrating his bachelorhood the day before his wedding when two White auto workers, thinking that he was Japanese because Japanese cars were doing very well in the '80s and American manufacturing was on the decline, saw Vincent Chin at this bar at his bachelor party and thought he was Japanese and beat him to death.

It was a heinous horrible crime. I think it goes to show that what happens and how one subgroup of Asian Americans is treated matters, both because it, in and of itself, is immoral and unethical, but also because it is a canary in the coal mine for the rest of us. That's why we have to be very, very conscious about things like anti-China rhetoric. Folks cannot tell if you're Korean American, Japanese American, Chinese American. I think the same goes for our South Asian brothers and sisters. The first victim of hate and violence after 911 was a Sikh man who is not Muslim but people do not know, and frankly, some of them do not care.

That is why what happens to any of our Asian brothers and sisters should matter to us and what happens to other subgroups, other groups like African Americans, Latinos, it can easily happen to any of us. That's why we always have to be in solidarity even though they will find ways to cleave us apart. Sometimes it's language, sometimes it's immigration status. The powers that be will try to separate us because we have power in numbers and because our solidarity is a threat to them.

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[00:17:53] Jon-Barrett: Our conversation took place right before the midterm elections in 2022. As mailers were bombarding voters regarding issues and candidates, one, in particular, was alarming. Sent from the America First Legal Foundation, this flyer pitted white and Asian against Black and Mexican. This is not a new tactic to subvert solidarity.

[00:18:17] Annie: It works to pit groups against each other. That is how power remains concentrated in the hands of the White men that currently hold it. It is a tried and true method. It is also not new to use Asian Americans as a wedge. The whole concept of a model minority lifted up after the civil rights movements as the reactionary force to curtail the rights that minority groups were making. It's very easy to then just pick off one group and say, "This group is great and every other minority group should be like Asian Americans. If they can make it here, why can't everybody? If you can't, it must be something inherent about you."

That has been so pernicious, not only for all of America but for Asian Americans in particular. I think we have now talked about this extensively, but it bears repeating all the time because new mailers like that come out all the time that tried to associate Asian Americans and Whiteness and make Asian Americans "honorary Whites" but that whole tactic is really a type of white supremacy in and of itself. It belies the vast diversity within the Asian American population, which, yes, there are Asian American subgroups that have and make a lot of money and there are also Asian American subgroups that are struggling deeply, deeply struggling economically.

To conflate all of that, and say that we're successful is just not true. Also, we cannot be used as a wedge to pin down and criticize other minority groups, particularly African Americans. It is so easy to use Asian Americans as this wedge as we've just seen in the Supreme Court this week when the Supreme Court heard the two affirmative action cases at Harvard and UNC. I think it's why it's so important that Asian-American students and activists were out there on the court steps in solidarity with Black and Brown students saying that we support affirmative action and we are beneficiaries of affirmative action.

For us, race-conscious admissions is important because taking away that, a race is so much of our identity. We really need to stand in solidarity with each other and not allow Asian Americans to be picked off and used in this way. It's harmful for other communities of color, it's harmful for us.

[00:20:51] Miko: I think during this time of the multiple pandemics that we've been experiencing, we are realizing that the system is broken. The system that is built in White supremacy and hatred and capitalism is broken and working in isolation only fuels that current system. The need for us to pull together and work in solidarity across all groups is critically important and we're seeing that. We've seen in the third-world liberation movement that happened in the '60s and '70s and we're seeing a resurgence of that, recognizing that individual approaches to civil rights are critical.

Black Lives Matter as its own movement is really important. Latinx community and indigenous communities working together is critically important and working across a solidarity movement building is also important. It cannot be we have this one way, we're working in isolation, just Chinese American or just Mexican, but it has to be this broad-based approach. AACRE is about Broad-based Asian-American Pacific Islander support, and it is about working in solidarity with other ethnic groups and not just ethnic, but class groups that are facing these systems of oppression and trying to work in a way that we can envision a new world.

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[00:22:24] Jon-Barrett: Let's dive a little deeper into the work these two women are doing for equity and civil rights and the hope they have for the future.

[00:22:34] Miko: I have two hats. One, I am the lead producer for Apex Express, and the other is I'm actually the director of programs for all of AACRE. Around the 2000s, I believe, a bunch of different groups got together to really talk about marriage equality and how marriage equality was a critical component to everybody having access, and in this case, equal access to love who can fight that. In that way, multiple groups came together, including an organization that's now known as Lavender Phoenix, but at the time started out as API equality. That was for queer and trans, AAPI folks. Another organization called The Network for Religion and Justice, which is queer and trans, AAPI folks in the spirituality community.

A few of these different groups came together and said, "We want to make sure that love is love and that anybody can get married." From that group, that was the start of this network called AACRE Asian Americans for Civil Rights Equality and then additional groups started to come to that. Groups including Asian Prisoner Support Committee that supports incarcerated and formally incarcerated AAPI folks.

Groups like HIP Hmong Innovating Politics, which is supporting Southeast Asian folks, Asian Refugees United, which is supporting folks impacted by displacement, Vietnamese folks, and Bhutanese folks. VietUnity, a group that's also supporting folks from the Vietnamese diaspora and others. ASATA, Association of South Asians Taking Action, each of these groups are all committed to social change through Asian Americans.

[00:24:18] Annie: One of my big responsibilities as the director of policy at CAA is contributing to our work at Stop AAPI Hate. Stop AAPI Hate is a national coalition founded by CAA as well as AAPI Equity Alliance in LA and the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University. As part of our Stop AAPI Hate work, we carried a huge legislative package last year called No Place for Hate California, which included three bills and two budget requests to try to take a public health and civil rights approach to confronting the uptick in anti-AAPI hate incidents that we were receiving.

Since we were founded in March 2020, we've received over 11,400 reports of hate against AAPIs from across the nation. The vast majority of these are not crimes. The vast majority is verbal harassment often by a stranger, often in public. A sidewalk, a store, or a place that's open to the public transit, it's usually a racialized or sexualized comment slur, and just because it's not a crime does not mean that it is not deeply impactful to the person who has been harmed. It gets to my larger point, which is the way we treat each other is so important because these things are not crimes.

You cannot prosecute this, you cannot call the police about someone calling you this name as you were crossing the street. It doesn't work, but the way in which we view each other and the way in which we treat each other, to me, that's the heart of what is at anti-AAPI Hate and that is inflamed by things like political rhetoric that blames China or Chinese people for COVID, that blame us for economic downturns, that blame us for espionage, accusing us of working for the Chinese Communist Party. All of that political rhetoric seeps into the way we perceive each other and the way we treat each other.

It also means that the remedies to anti-AAPI Hate has to not be criminal because none of this stuff falls within the criminal legal system, but has to be something else. How do we get at improving the way we treat each other, improving the way we think about each other, and being up upfront and honest. How do we build community essentially? That stuff is so much harder than passing any law than writing a bill. It is the way in which we live. That is what we are trying to change.