hardboiled

uniting two generations of activists

The 18th Annual API Issues Conference

On March 1, over 300 youth activists, Bay Area university students, and movement veterans alike flocked to the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union for the 18th annual Asian Pacific Islander Issues Conference (APIICON). Under the unifying theme of "peeling off" labels oft-imposed on Asian Americans, APIICON addressed issues ranging from ethnic neighborhoods to the evolution of ethnic terms, brought in pioneering activists from the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA,) and celebrated Asian American and Pacific islander culture through food, art and music.

A highlight of the conference was seeing the veterans of AAPA return to campus for the Alliance's 40th anniversary. These 19 men and women played a major role in such late-‘60s campaigns as the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) protests. Their efforts helped to win many amenities Cal Asian Americans take for granted today; AAPA participated in the battle for the Ethnic Studies department and sponsored one of the first Asian American Studies experimental courses. Even UC Berkeley's martial arts program was a result of AAPA's work. Yet their struggle is not restricted to the past; the fight for a Third World college continues today, and as one alumna said, although Asian Americans may be more numerous and better organized than in the past, the challenges they must face are greater still. The need for Asian Americans to stand against the stereotype of submissive quietude—and their own individual interests, if necessary—is as great as ever.

Wei Ming Dariotis, an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State, delivered the keynote address. In her speech "A Name We Can All Love Calling Ourselves," she discussed the importance of names, particularly for "those who are not part of the overprivileged, over-educated Asian American upper class." She identifies as "hapa," which she characterized as a "liberating identity," a word of her community's own and an alternative to passing as Chinese. However, she lamented, the word "hapa" had come to be appropriated by other Asian ethnic groups, many of whom, as "settlers in Hawaii," dominate the native Hawaiians. The term "hapa," Dariotis said, had gone from a symbol of self-determination to "a form of colonizing violence in which [she] was participating." She then renounced the usage of the word until it was reclaimed by those it originally belonged to, and ceased to be a label used to disempower.

One of the many panels offered at the conference addressed ethnic enclaves, insular ethnic-focused communities that often arose from alien land laws, redlining and other discrimination restricting members of a certain ethnicity to one area. The panel focused on Stockton's Little Manila and San Francisco's Japantown, both unique and endangered places. Little Manila faces the destruction of three historic buildings, and despite the assistance of the Black Eyed Peas and the History Channel's National Trust, the Little Manila Foundation's efforts to save them have proceeded poorly. Japantown was recently sold to Los Angeles-based firm 3D Investments, unable to claim the protective status of historical town because of its demolition and reconstruction in 1966. Although the city guaranteed Japantown 15 years of protection from changes by the company, the deal leaves San Jose's Japantown as essentially the only true Japantown in the United States.

Attendees were provided lunch from Oakland's Phnom Penh House, a Cambodian restaurant. They were then treated to an impressive art gallery, ranging from realistic portraits and anatomy studies to the stylized and fanciful, as well as performances by the High Notes, iLL-Literacy and Rising Asterisk (in addition to Cal Raijin Taiko, which gave a traditional drum performance after the opening address). These Asian American artists, selected to provide exposure to underappreciated talent, did not disappoint. The High Notes soothed with love ballads while Rising Asterisk had audience members gathering around the stage, hands in the air. iLL-Literacy married comedy and political awareness with a set of spoken-word performances.

"It feels like I'm on the sinking Titanic of American foreign policy," Nico Cary of iLL-Literacy said, "and I can't avoid watching Leo and Kate kiss."

The conference closed with what is known as a unity clap; all conference attendees began a slow clap that escalated rapidly, signaling the energy in the room, until thunderous applause filled the Pauley Ballroom. It was a fitting exeunt for a day that brought together the struggles of the past, the problems of the present and the promise of the future in one dialogue. Though the attendees were an extremely diverse group, when the conference was done, all shared a renewed understanding of the issues at stake in the Asian American and Pacific Islander struggle, and all had shed that pernicious label of the "passive Asian."