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Radical Resistance in Conservative Times: New Asian American Organizations in the 1990s
By Diane C. Fujino and Kye Leung
Part 5 of 16
Also in response to the increase in right-wing activity throughout the nation, along with stepped up economic restructuring and neoliberal policies globally, it is our contention that the Movement began a qualitative upswing in early 1998, motion that had been building since the mid-1990s. In 1998 alone, there was an exceptional number of nationwide gatherings of activists in the Asian American community (Serve the People conference on Asian American activism at UCLA and the Asian Left Forum in Los Angeles, both in May 1998), in the African American community (Black Radical Congress in Chicago in June 1998), and on issues of political prisoners and prisons (Jericho '98 march and rally for political prisoners in Washington D.C. in March 1998, Critical Resistance conference on the prison industrial complex at Berkeley in September 1998). Moreover, 1998 represented 100 years of US colonialism in Hawai'i, Guam, Philippines, Puerto Rican, and elsewhere. Related to this, significant activity in the Puerto Rican movement has taken place in 1998 and 1999. Large marches and rallies in multiple cities were organized to protest a century of US imperialism; students shut down the San Juan airport to protest the privatization of the telephone company; unprecedented numbers have been protesting the US military presence on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques since a US bomb killed a civilian in April 1999; and in September 1999, eleven Puerto Rican political prisoners, incarcerated for close to 20 years, were released from prison. Grounding these events in imperialism is significant. One of the important revolutions in contemporary times is the Zapatista struggle in Chiapas, Mexico. And this revolution was kicked off in response to 500 years of Western conquest of Indigenous Peoples. In 1999, the Zapatista revolution inspired students to shut down, for six months at the time of this writing, the largest, public university in Latin America, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), in response to International Monetary Fund impositions to raise tuition fees, and to fight for the democratization of the university. Also during this period, in Asia and the Pacific Islands, workers and students have organized massive protests against International Monetary Fund austerity measures as well as the massacre in East Timor. It was in this context of increased activism that the Asian Left Forum was organized. And this nationwide gathering inspired the formation of ARC in Boston.
Given the socio-political climate, what does it mean to be radical in the 1990s? The revolutionary fervor that characterized the 1960s and 70s, with its militant actions and socialist and/or revolutionary nationalist ideology, has dissipated. And while revolutionaries continue to be active in the 1990s, the overall nature of the social movements has changed. Today, the radical wing of the Asian American Movement is characterized by groups that critique racism and capitalism and seek to transform social institutions, but do not actively work to build a radical working-class movement or to create a socialist state. Still these groups can be identified as radical because their analysis of society and their practice are rooted in systemic oppression, namely, capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism and heterosexism. The statement by API FORCE sums up the radical ideology of these new groups: "We ... are committed to building a world of peace and justice, where people's needs come before corporate profits. We envision a new society based on multiculturalism, democracy, mutual respect, and economic and social justice for all."