“Chasing the Legacy of the ‘Chinatown Old Left’ of San Francisco” The Chinatown Old Left also known as the ‘‘Chinese Marxist Left,’ the term coined by H. Mark Lai (the “dean of Chinese American history”). Mark Lai was a bilingual Chinese American, who not only was a participant and activist, began documentation of Chinese progressives during the 30’s/40’s/50’s encompassing three groupings: intellectuals, labor activists and small businessmen. The majority of whom were not necessarily Marxist in ideology, but were definitely progressive, left leaning, concerned Overseas Chinese.
Attention will be centered around individuals who emerged from the Chinese American Democratic Youth League (民青 — Mun Ching in Cantonese / Minqing in Mandarin) — a literary and cultural group that supported the Communist Party of China’s determined War of Resistance to Japanese imperialist occupation, and later waged the Chinese civil war led by the revolutionary movement headed by Mao Tsetung.1 These groups — the intellectuals, labor activists and small business people — enjoyed mutual intersections and came under intensive McCarthy-era government harassment; and many suffered mental breakdowns, suicides, deportations, and loss of citizenship. Some of their stories are captured and highlighted in the 2001 video documentary, “The Chinatown Files”. (2)
This legacy birthed several institutions and movements: (1) the Chinese Folk Dance Association was an offshoot founded by veterans of the Mun Ching, who also guided and ran
- the Chinese Communist Party under the leadership of Chairman Mao at that time was a vibrant revolutionary political force which enjoyed and rallied immense support from among the basic people in China, and in turn had captured the imagination and support of many Overseas Chinese who opposed the corrupt repressive government of Chiang Kai-shek. Since the death of Mao Tsetung in 1976, and with the ascendency of Deng Hsiao-ping, signaled the overthrow of the socialist system in China and brought about the capitalist restoration in China. Since that time the Chinese Communist Party ceased to be an inspirational force for humanity, and China has emerged as a full blown capitalist society and an imperialist rival to U.S. imperialism.
- During that early period, activists from Mun Ching also had intersections with progressive forces in the New York Chinese community through the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance and its affiliated Chinese language newspaper, the now defunct China Daily News.
The progressive movie house, the World Theatre at 644 Broadway; (2) the 1966 emergence of George Woo and the Chinatown Youth Movement; and (3) many offspring of the CML joined and drove the Asian American Movement, inclusive of their participation and leadership in the Third World Liberation Front student strikes at San Francisco State and at UC Berkeley and the lofting of Asian American studies, as well as a major Asian American anti-imperialist, radical organization in the Bay Area with roots in Manilatown/Chinatown and Japantown (Nihonmachi) San Francisco.
“David Wong and the Social Justice Campaigns Fueled by Yuri Kochiyama” Have you heard about the David Wong Case? This was spurred by the late Yuri Kochiyama, whose work with many Black liberation movement political prisoners, had heard about a Chinese immigrant New York State prison inmate who was wrongly accused for a prison murder he had nothing to do with. Through determined and tenacious work by the David Wong Support Committee (DWSC), after several years of outreach, mobilizations and investigations, Wong was exonerated, released and returned to Hong Kong.
The work to free David Wong was very likely the most important Asian American social justice campaign of the 1990’s (outside of the justice campaigns for Chol Soo Lee or for Vincent Chin). Yuri Kochiyama’s leadership was a significant factor in maintaining the momentum of the David Wong case as it sought social justice traction through several years. Directly related is the unsung work of the late Wayne Lum, a postal worker turned social justice campaign leader, who shepherded these initiatives inspired by Yuri Kochiyama.
The DWSC incubated several other Asian American justice initiatives, e.g. Asians for Mumia Abu-Jamal; Asians for October 22nd National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality; South Asians Against Police Brutality and Racism; the Chaplain James Yee Support Committee (a U.S. army chaplain persecuted and tortured for ‘sedition’ after whistleblowing at Guantanamo Bay); and supporting Hawai’i native Ehren Watada, the first U.S. army officer to refuse duty to the 1st Iraq war — much of which involved intersections with veterans of the Black liberation struggle. This project will involve organizing a documented retrospective among the DWSC activists and its legal team, who are now dispersed throughout the U.S.
Areas for Development:
The Arizona Chinese: the Ongs & Tangs. The great-grandparents of one family settled in Arizona at the beginning of the 20th century leaving roots there today as well as an lasting imprint on US history. This is the to-be-uncovered story of one Chinese American family.
One Japanese American Family’s Pilgrimage to the Topaz Internment Camp. Three sansei siblings of the Hedani family of San Francisco gathered a three generational family convergence (Japanese, Chinese, Pilipino & Vietnamese) to tour the internment camp which incarcerated their Nisei families in the desert of Utah during WW2.
The historic precedence of ‘Jazz At Pearl’s’. The late Pearl Wong (and her daughter, vocalist Cookie Wong) lofted a jazz venue from within her family-run restaurant in the San Francisco Chinatown community. It soon grew into a renowned cultural institution whose reputation reached beyond the confines of the Chinatown ghetto during a period of societal shifts and community transformation.