Interviewee: Tsiwen Law

Interviewer(s): Divya Aikat and Christina Huang

Date: July 24, 2023

Location: Philadelphia, PA

Transcriber: Christina Huang

Length: 1:29:26

Christina Huang [00:00]
Hello, my name is Christina Huang.

Divya Aikat [00:02]
My name is Divya Aikat.

Christina Huang [00:04]
Today's date is July 24, 2023. We are located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. We are here today with Mr. Tsiwen Law. And he is a Asian American activist dating back to the anti Vietnam war movement in the late 1960s. Mr. Law would you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

Tsiwen Law [00:26]
Okay. I grew up in New York City, and went to University of California, Berkeley, to study economics. And... so when I arrived, that's when I first became introduced to Floyd Yuen, and a number of the members of the Asian American Political Alliance. I did not realize that they just started the organization a few months before. But anyway, they were looking for every Asian American, they could recruit from campus. And so I started attending the meetings and participating in Asian American identity issues that they were talking about, and helped write some articles in the newsletter and so on. By the January 1969, after we came back from the Christmas holidays, the Afro American Students Union had reached an impasse with the administration on creating a Third World College. This was a new idea that the Third World College was to have self determination in education, that is that it would be an independent college but supported by the university, but the community and the third world people would run the college and determine who could be a professor to teach and what courses would be taught. You know, how much of a budget they would have, what would be required for a major and all those kinds of administrative details would be decided by the college. Basically, the idea was to have four different departments: one for Native American studies, one for Asian American studies, one for Chicano or Mexican American studies, (the Puerto Rican population there was pretty much non- existent, so it was mainly Mexican American) and the African American studies, right. So four departments in a college, and there would be a separate dean for that college, and the dean would submit the budget to the university, and so on. So that was the design, and it was our job to devise course offerings and degree requirements. And anyway, the African Americans had started negotiating back when I first arrived on campus. But by January of 1969, they hit an impasse, and they said they were going to call a strike. They asked AAPA: “Will you join us?” Of course,the Asian American Political Alliance decided to go ahead and join the strike. So did the Mexican Americans and the Native Americans, so then we formed the Third World Liberation Front leadership for that strike. This was the first campus strike that was ever led by a coalition of people of color. Before this, there had been a Free Speech Movement, and that was largely white people. And that had all ended in '66. And then the anti war movement started in '66 '67. But they were not led by people of color. This was the first time it was going to be led by people of color. And one of the first things that, of course, the leadership did was to reach out to the faculty union and get support from other student organizations on campus, right. So that it would be a broad coalition. And so when we started the strike, it was a few 1000 people, but among a few key organizations, we did had did have the support from the faculty union. Back then, the faculty union and the Faculty Senate are were separate; the Faculty Union was an actual union that has a bargaining unit for collective bargaining, whereas the Faculty Senate really just did policy on academic issues. But we did want the support of the faculty senate, which sets academic policies, you know, for consideration by the Board of Regents and the Chancellor. And so eventually, by toward the end of the strike, we were able to get the faculty senate to support the idea of a third world college, but not at the beginning. But the faculty union did support us from the beginning. And so we set up picket lines all around the buildings, in all schools. The idea was there would be no classes until there was a college, that the university agreed to grant a college to us.

And so as I told you, the tactics involved blocking Sather Gate, every day at noon time. During the day time before noon, we would go out and speak to different classes. We had had invitations from different faculty, to come explain what the strike was about and why we were doing this, you know, what was our goal. And so, you know, we had to go out there and talk and some classes were off campus, depending upon the faculty member, some faculty members, junior faculty members may not have felt as confident that they could, so we did, whenever, wherever we were invited, we went to speak to them, and asked them to join the strike. And so...every day, when we blocked Sather Gate, my job was actually to steer people away from trying to go through, saying “You don't want to do this not today. You know, because you would bump into a bunch of people that are kind of angry and standing in the Gate for a purpose.” Anyway I was, I think, I was somewhat successful in convincing people, because you could steer people to bridges on either side of the creek, on either side of the gate, you know, to cross the creek if needed to cross over, usually to get lunch or something like that on the other side of campus. And so around noon time, the police would have a bullhorn, you know, and go on the PA system say, “You got to disperse, or we're coming after you” or whatever, and then the tear gas would start, right. So we didn't know, details about tear gas, I mean, in terms of United States was a signatory to the 1921 Versailles Treaty, where the United States government agreed not to use tear gas and other types of chemicals for warfare. As a result, tear gas was included in the in the prohibited substances in 1921. But since this was not a war; rather this was, you know, what they called crowd control, right. So they can use tear gas, right. So anyway, the police used the tear gas on us. And of course, you know, people would disperse because tear gas gets in your eyes, and it gets in your throat. Pretty, pretty potent stuff. And then we would continue to go to our class assignments where we had to speak about the strike. And then some sometimes we had meetings with people or groups, student groups at nighttime, as well, and we would encourage students and their organizations to join the strike. And why it was important for us to be able to win this. Again, this, we think that a lot of the violence by the police, three different police departments come on campus at different times, right, because if a township sent all of its police there on the campus, they had no police coverage. That was was pretty unthinkable back then. And so you know, they could only do it for a day or two and then in came another local police department, to replace the previous squad. But eventually it got to the point where, because we continued the strike, and they couldn't convince us to stop, then the University brought out the Alameda County Sheriff's. The Alameda County Sheriff's, was a different kind of group, because they had what we now call SWAT uniforms, they had the full riot gear, with helmets and everything. So they're armed with big batons and so on. So they can beat you at will, you know, it was not that important to arrest you but it was more important to beat you so that you don’t come back. So if you got, you know, felt some pain, then you might not continue with the strike. But anyway. So... anyway, this went on. And throughout the quarter, there was bad weather, there was all kinds of things, but we stayed with it all the way through the end of March. And eventually, they couldn't keep using the Alameda County Sheriff's on campus. So the Governor called in the National Guard. And now, when you're just a freshman in college, you don't know that the National Guard and the police have different standards for rules of engagement, right. The police have to show probable cause before they can engage, they're supposed to have probable cause before they can beat you and arrest you, and so on so forth. The National Guard does not need probable cause. If they get an order to shoot you, they shoot you. And so we did not know the difference, right. We just thought, here's more people in uniform, but here are people with bayonets and stuff. But the reality was once National Guard was there, it's a different ballgame, right. And then think about oh, well, it's because we're third world people, and they're scared of us. And they think we're going to do the worst things and so on so forth, that, you know, they have to really suppress us. Otherwise, you know, it'd be like a slave uprising or something. So anyway, so the National Guard was there.

And then the Governor himself shut down the campus sometime around the end of March, and basically told that all the students to go home. Well, we didn't go home. Some of the students did go home because their classes were canceled at that point, right. So there was for those who were just there to study that there was no point continuing to be there. But there was the national guard there. And there was us, right, so we were still there till the end, because we were trying to negotiate a Third World College. And remember that we were marching on our way to the California Hall, which was the University administration building. And Floyd and the other leadership, you know, from the Third World Liberation Front were there to go negotiate with the Chancellor and the administration to try to resolve the strike, right, because we'd reached this point where Governor shut down the campus. So what else did they have to negotiate? Right, we would be able to continue to keep the school closed. And since you know, the school we shut down we really didn't have to block the gate anymore, right. So for a little few people passing through the Gate on the way to negotiations, and the University sent the police out there and arrested all the leadership, so as to sabotage negotiations. I learned that lesson that even when they have very little leverage to negotiate with you, they will still use the forces of the police, and law enforcement against you, if they can, to undermine whatever it is you're trying to achieve. So.. interestingly enough, around the time of the arrest, we had to go get lawyers and bail out the leadership to get them out of jail. It did set everything back a while, but then the Chancellor had a heart attack. And so, I guess he was receiving a lot of pushback from the Regents, telling him to get this resolved, right. You got to do something. Anyway, so he was in the hospital for his heart attack and so at that point, I think the Administration said, Well, okay, we will negotiate. And so we ended up agreeing to, not a Third World College, but an Ethnic Studies Department. And so it became Ethnic Studies with four divisions, Native American, African American, Mexican American, Asian American, right. And each division would then, you know, the goal was, each division eventually would evolve into a department and then the whole thing would become a College; that never happened, unfortunately, but at that point, you know, we figured this is the best we would get. We had demanded that they create 35 work study positions, to allow our students to work in the community, on community issues. And so, the university agreed to pay for the work study slots. Work study is not a big investment on the part of the school, right. It's, they do it anyway, for kids who need to have a scholarship or need some extra money to finish paying their tuition and wherever else. So it's not a big deal. But for us, it was because then we had a presence in the community. And we built the courses. So by, the end of the strike, we had one course, in the Spring (We were on the quarter system), taught by Lin Chi Wang who eventually became the chairman of the division. And he was a doctoral student from Asia, but he was specialized in Asian American Studies. And so he, you know, taught that first course, and I remember, we had 100-200, students, packed into the classroom. Then in the fall, then we started our core courses, courses on education issues in the Asian American community, and courses about sociology, and of course, Asian American history. The introductory course was about the different Asian American communities. And then we had the community outreach classes, and teaching you how to work with the community and developing and fighting on community issues, Empowerment, or dealing with immigration problems, or dealing with, food scarcity, or housing issues, and so on. So there were a wide variety of issues to address, not just those in the Chinese community, but the Filipino community and the Japanese American community, right. And so, those community courses developed out of that introductory material: including the basic class structure that had developed in our communities, and... so you were required, if you were going to matriculate into the major, to have community courses, as well as academic courses on campus. That way, you had the full scope of, you know, what it meant to be Asian American, what self-determination really was about, and what skills you needed to have, what understandings you needed, how you relate with the community, that is limited English proficient, right.

Many Asian American immigrants didn't have strong foundation in the English language; English was not their first language and their immigration status varied. Many of them were refugees, or came over with permanent resident status, but they were not US citizens yet from 1965, right. So they're, you know, a lot of people are in immigrant status. And that meant that if you committed a felony while you were in immigrant status, you could be deported. So of course, you know, they're always concerned about making sure that you don't get charged with a felony, right. So those are the kinds of issues and then of course, the fact that they had come from either war torn areas of Southeast Asia or there was the Cultural Revolution. Which up ended a lot of people's lives. And there were periods during the Cultural Revolution when education didn't happen. Schools were shut down. So there were these gaps in information that people had to be overcome. And many people who did arrive had less than a four year high school education anyway, right. Maybe they had a middle school education in their own language, right. So you had to like, get them up to these high school level to understand and deal with, you know, issues involving food stamps, or involving, you know, other, you know, social benefits or whatever housing vouchers. Administrative qualifications are pretty complicated. And so, this is, you know, part of the design of the courses to create a major that shows the university that we have a lot of students who are taking these courses. Well, we had the remedial (bonehead) English class, which, for those who didn't score high on their English SAT, or whatever test it was, if you didn't meet a certain cutoff, then you had to take a remedial English class,

Divya Aikat [12:25]
Did you say Bonehead?

Tsiwen Law [21:36]
They called it the bonehead [All Laughs] English class. Like, you really didn't do much, but it was it was to improve your English language skills where you could write papers and be somewhat literate when you when you're explaining yourself. And so, the division said, we will have a class because a lot of our students, Asian American students who have been refugees or recent immigrants, who had this gap in their own language now are coming to the United States. You know, they don't have the basic geography or whatever it is to meet that English level. So each Ethnic American studies had that one class and a lot of people took that class, so there was always a well subscribed course. So that course was there. But that was only one of the core courses, but you know, they had other courses like Korean American history and so on. Right, so that you understand how different communities developed. Because you have to understand that different communities transition because of the way people emigrated to the United States at different times. Right. So, so one of the things we were studying was Angel Island, you know, how many of the South Asians as well as East Asians came in through Angel Island (instead of Ellis Island). So that was, that was an interesting, kind of, you know, way to, you know, teach the history, but also something that was very local, right.

Because so many people between 1910 to 1940, immigrated through Angel Island. So that was an experience. But the problem was, we didn't have a whole lot of books. I mean, we didn't have books like this to assign, it was less difficult to assign students books written about Mexican Americans and African Americans, but there wasn't very much research done on Asian Americans. You know, we didn't have the internet, where you could look stuff up on the internet. But we had to actually research by hand and find the information to teach. So it was pretty challenging to find many books we could assign, because without scholars in the field, the books hadn't been written yet. So now it's very different. Now you have the benefit of you know, so many more Asian American scholars who have written books that you can assign for courses and research like that. I remember taking one of the courses in 1970, or I think it was 1971 about Asian American legal history. That was quite an eye opener, in terms of the material, so that's the course that I started teaching at Penn in about 2000 and 2001. I think, before that, I first taught at Penn, Asian American studies because it didn't have a program at Penn. There was one history course taught by a white Professor Hilary Conroy. The Penn students began asking why are we going to this class taught by a non-Asian? Who's talking about Asian American history? So one of the college deans there had seen some article I wrote, when I was the chairman of the Mayor's Commission on Asian American Affairs. I had written some article, I can't remember exactly what it was about it, but having to do, I think, with the community needs, and empowerment and so on. And so Dean Joe Sun, invited me to teach at Penn. And so I taught a public policy course, Asian Americans and public policy, which was new. That was a topic that had never been taught there before. And so we had a core of four courses that started at Penn in 1991, of which one was my course, Public Policy. And then there was one on English literature, Asian American literature. And then I think two history courses. And so that was the that was the beginning of it. It wasn't until seven years later, that they actually formalized it into a department with a minor, right. The program eventually evolved into 14 courses. But, you know, that's how that's how it developed at a school like Penn. Before that, you would think, while they had African American studies since the 70s, why didn’t they have Asian American studies. But it wasn't until the late 1980s, early 1990s, that there was a large, critical mass of Asian Americans at Penn, to start demanding Asian American Studies, and particularly students from California, who organized a group to demand the creation of Asian American studies. So the initial courses were designed to show that there was interest in this, you know, beyond the original course taught by Conroy and that there was a need for it, because there were students enrolled that you know, regularly attending these courses, teaching those courses there. And the strike one, just remember, that was pretty violent. You know, a lot of people were beaten. So people need to understand that, you know, a lot of sacrifice went into getting it started. Making it happen required a persistent commitment, but it taught us that, you know, a small group, (because we were not a majority of the campus. As people of color, we were like maybe 10% of the campus, maybe not even that) but we were persistent. And because we were able to convince other organizations like the faculty senate to support our demands for a college, eventually we prevailed. We weren't going away. They realized that. So now Berkeley has one of the largest Asian American Studies programs that grants PhDs.

Christina Huang [28:30]
Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Like going into your background, I could imagine the amount commitment and like effort went into this. And you said you were a freshman when you were on campus?

Tsiwen Law [28:41]
Yeah.

Christina Huang [28:41]
That's crazy. To be involved with all this in the National Guard called on you so early.

Divya Aikat [28:47]
So early..

Christina Huang [28:47]
Like you're like 18-19 year old, like our age, and you're like... yeah and I was wondering what, how do you gain such a critical mass and maintain the large people committed to this movement? I know, the these days and age students, you know, something happens, they get involved for a week, and then just moving on to the next issue. So how did you sustain this movement? And what were meetings? How did you get students engaged?

Tsiwen Law [29:14]
Well, during the strike, we were meeting almost every day...because we had to plan the next day, well, where are you going to go speak or where are we going to be, you know, where? Who's got these picket lines over this building and that building? So and we were also negotiating with the other unions on campus to back the strike. Plumbers, the pipe fitters, the electricians, everybody else, we wanted everybody to honor our picket lines, you know, so. So, you know, while the strike was going on we were engaged in constant activity, right, and then, after we succeeded, the work evolved into running the department, running the program, and getting, everybody, all the faculty all assigned and teaching, and knowing how are your classes going? Where are we? What are we planning for next quarter? Because, you know, under a quarter system, it was less than 16 weeks, 11 weeks or something like that so a shorter time period. So you got to be ready for the next quarter. And so, you know, we had to line up who's going to teach what, right, so on so forth. So that was the administrative burden.

I ended up phasing out of it, because the war in Vietnam... I devoted more of my time to organizing on campus against the war, (after the strike), and we built organizations so there were those who said, well, the Asian American Political Alliance has done its job, we instituted the Asian American Studies division. And so now all our job is focused on the administration of Asian American Studies. I disagreed with that. I said, we need to have a political presence as an political student organization that continues to fight for Asian American studies, but also other issues involved in on-campus issues, the student issues, whatever they were, and then of course, the students wanted to be able to express themselves about the continuing war in Southeast Asia. Because we said “this is a racist war.” And we were the ones that really pointed that out as Asian Americans, that when a government uses napalm on people, right. You know what napalm is? It is a chemical jelly, right. That they dump it out airplanes and helicopters on people, and it burns your skin, burns off your clothes. So, you know, it just burns and... you know, United States had signed the Versailles Treaty in 1921, to say, it wouldn't be involved in chemical warfare, but here it was using chemical warfare. Next they dumped Agent Orange, with the dioxins that are in Agent Orange, all over South Vietnam. So this was chemical warfare also, and they say, oh, no, it's just burning the vegetation. You know, we're just using herbicides, but it killed everybody. And it caused teratogenic results in children. There are still children walking around that have birth defects. Were born with these defects from their parents being exposed to dioxins that were in the Agent Orange. And the government agreed that, you know, this stuff was poisonous, because the U.S. military agreed to compensate the veterans for it. And then of course, the My Lai Massacre, you know about that, right. So in March of 1968, the policy of the US government was to burn down all the villages, solely to flush out the Vietnamese who were still resisting United States. And My Lai was one of these villages. And they, they tried to say that, "Oh, these are all communist sympathizers. So we can burn down their village". And they lined up all these old women and women and children and elderly men that were not a military threat, (there were no men of military age in that village, and they were all out fighting to protect their country), but so the U.S. troops lined these unarmed people up and just opened fire on them with their M16s, their assault rifles. They shot about somewhere between 300-500 Vietnamese people and killed them all, dumped them in an open grave, right in a pit. And it wasn't reported until about five months later. Toward the end of 1968 the Army held military trials. There were 26 soldiers involved in American soldiers involved in killing these innocent people who were non-combatants; you don't intentionally kill non-combatants in war anyway. Of 26 U.S. soldiers prosecuted, only one them , only the lieutenant was court martialed, who gave the order to go ahead and open fire. All the other 25 they were exonerated saying that they took the commands from the lieutenant. So Lieutenant William Cowley was put on house arrest for three years. That was his punishment for killing five hundred people, by giving the orders. So, of course that result didn't sit well with the Asian American community in the anti-war movement, right. So we just hit the streets. And you know, a civilized nation can't do that. And then, little by little, the Pentagon Papers came out and it turned out that the United States was bombing not only Vietnam, but also bombing Laos, and Cambodia without a declaration of war. It was using as an excuse that the Vietnamese go into those other countries to run away from United States or wherever. You know we had news films, showing how the United States soldiers would take Vietnamese soldiers or "guerillas" up into helicopters, and then thrown them out. Yeah, just throw them out and it's on film. So it's not like they get to deny that we didn't do that. Only the United States had helicopters in Vietnam. So we said, you know, if Vietnam was a European country, you know, they wouldn't do that. But this was an Asian country, they would do that. This is the nature of a racist war. So you know, on one hand, there was the anti-war movement, the white anti war movement is focused on oh, let's bring the soldiers home, so that they don't have to suffer and die in Vietnam. And our Asian American focus was "no, the U.S. must end this in a fair way for the Vietnamese people," right. Because just because the soldiers come back doesn't mean the bombers stop bombing. The bombers are still out there dropping bombs on Vietnamese people, and the napalm and everything else. So, so that's why, as Asian Americans. we pushed this point of view that, you know, the war has to come to a successful end for the Vietnamese people, they have to be able to re-gain their self determination. And that was a different point of view, from “bring our boys home.” In the end, much information came out from soldiers themselves, particularly, Asian Americans, who had served in Vietnam. They told us what they did, what happened there. So it's not like we had to make anything up. But anyway, so, you know, I was involved in the student movement, against the war and continuing until, you know, the later years until after until the war basically ended. And because we said, you know, we wouldn't want anybody have to go over there anymore. This war needed to end and finally did end...but only after the bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong, and many other Vietnamese cities in order to push the United States negotiating position. The U.S. was just killing people, just so that they would have a better negotiating position with Vietnamese. What was there to negotiate about the war, though? U.S. had already lost the war. It had to leave Vietnam.

But I participated in organizing the Asian American Students Union on campus, and it was good to have an organization where the students could independently protest when the... administration tried to cut down the funding for Asian American Studies and other divisions of the Ethnic Studies programs. Because the people who worked in Asian American Studies didn't feel that they could just freely protest, because they're on the payroll right [laugh] and could lose their jobs. But an independent student organization has a voice and that allows us to be empowered to address when these issues come up. So you need to have that independent political voice. That is what I learned from being on campus, and that you just couldn't say, “Oh, we have Asian American Studies. Now we don't need the student movement anymore.” The student movement is critically dependent on independent organizations that advocate for self-determination, having that voice to speak up when necessary.

Divya Aikat [40:00]
Yeah, I that I wanted to talk a little bit more about the idea of self determination. You spoke about how the Third World Liberation Front, coined the term Asian American, and you even showed us a picture of you with the plaque there. What do you could you tell us more about this idea of self determination and what it means in the Asian American community and for and how it paired with your, your movement?

Tsiwen Law [40:31]
Okay, well, the whole concept originated in the Bandung Conference of 1955, in which the countries of the Third World, basically Asia, Africa and Latin America said, you know, we don't want to have to take sides between the United States and the Soviet Union. We don't want them controlling our destiny, we want to control our own destiny. We don't want to be colonies of other countries and just be a place where you extract raw resources from our country at very cheap prices, and then turn around and try to sell refined or manufactured goods back to us at inflated prices, you know, and plus control who governs our countries. The superpowers wanted to dictate what policies we have to follow. As Asian Americans, we adopt that same concept in terms of our communities, because our communities were being controlled through policies that were established in Washington or, you know, the state capitals or wherever, but there are no Asian Americans involved in setting policy. So it's whatever they decided for Asian Americans and their communities, which tended to be disastrous. It's like, you're not even in the picture. The government took the position that it didn't have to consider our community needs. As a community, even though you're maybe citizens, you pay taxes you do. You may vote, but we're not considering you, because you are not at the table. And that's the experience when you look back at Asian American history. That's the way it's been. It's that Asian Americans don't count. And these Americans don't count, because they are foreigners, perpetual foreigners. The U.S. government doesn't have to address your concerns as a community, and including affirmative action, right. Because remember that the model minority myth came out of research done at Berkeley, William Peterson was a sociology professor at Cal. And he decided that the data seem to show that Asian Americans had exceeded the income levels of white people by the 1960s based on the Census data. But the problem with his data was that he was using household income.

And so it was not statistically accurate. He was comparing white household income to Asian household income. At that time, Asians in the U.S. had a higher labor force participation rate per household than the white households. So his analysis didn't properly reflect what individuals were making. Finally a Filipino sociologist, Amado Cabezas redid the analysis on Asian American groups and compared them with white individuals by education levels, and found that Asians with a PhD made less than whites with a high school diploma. So there was real discrimination going on in pay rates. But it was hidden by the fact that Peterson had compared US household income rather than individual income. And so his study was statistically flawed because it didn't count for higher Asian labor force participation rates, the white households really had one breadwinner. Asians usually had three breadwinners per household. In operating the store, mom and dad worked there. And so did you know the children right. So, the uncle or somebody you know, in the family also worked at the store. So you can't compare households between whites and Asian Americans. Peterson didn't get it. So anyway, and the newspapers didn't get it. And so you have this widespread model minority myth. Why is that important? Because even though Cabezas did expose the flaws in the study, the universities who created affirmative action programs for admissions to the schools, focused on African Americans and Mexican Americans, but didn't have any programs for Asian Americans. Their excuse was “you're a model minority so you don't have to be included in a affirmative action” which is why the Asian American communities, of course, then revolt, they say, You're wrong, you know. And that was the purpose of self determination, which is that we should be able to speak up for ourselves that say that the model minority doesn't speak for us. You know, it doesn't correctly reflect, you know, what really happens in Asian American community, and therefore, should not be a basis for deciding affirmative action programs, right. And so all of that is behind the question of self determination. How do you, you know, we were able to convince a lot of schools that the model minority was not a basis for policymaking, it was actually a flawed basis for policymaking. Plus, you know, as the refugees from the southeast Asia starting to arrive, it didn't account for the huge gaps in terms of, you know, their education, their ability to get into colleges, or universities or higher education either. So, you know, so we have a community that has some people who make some money, but some lot of people who are very poor, right, because they're former refugees. And so it doesn't account for the variety of economic circumstances in the Asian American community, which is why we said, you know, we have to be the ones that tell you how to set the policy. And that was what was behind the demand for self determination. Right. And the other, you know, so the other aspects of being an Asian American was, you know, that we have history, we have suffered a history of oppression in the United States, and therefore, we align ourselves with other oppressed peoples people of color. And that, you know, we deserve to be able to use our history as a guide for how we want to self determine our community's futures. And that, you know, the, that we are definitely opposed to the war as an imperialist war. And, you know, that we believe in self determination. So, the Asian American identity shows that, across the history of all Asian American groups in this country, we suffer very similar kinds of treatment under the law, and, you know, at the hands of the government, been driven out of our neighborhoods, had our stores and homes burned down, right. And you know, been prevented from acquiring US citizenship on the basis of race, all the way through in 1923, right. From 1923, the Supreme Court established. I mean, there were very few people that got citizenship there was there was a gap in time when the Chinese Exclusion law was passed, that they neglected to or not that, you know, after the Civil War, when African Americans gained US citizenship, and the end of slavery, that they left out a phrase that would continue the bar against Asian Americans from continuing to get citizens from being able to get citizenship, they left it out. So why did he change? Americans don't apply for citizenship during that period. And they say, it's not in the statute, right. So some judges gave them US citizenship, right. 1870s But some other judges said, Well, they didn't intend to...they didn't really they just it was a mistake [Laughs]. So even though it's not in there, then you you can't become a US citizen. So then, you know, even some of those who did receive citizenship, because it wasn't in there, because the judge said, "Oh, is doesn't say you can't become a US citizen, had it reversed by the courts". And so, you know, this is the thing that happens, but to Asian Americans right, to be treated as a perpetual foreigner because of these laws.

Christina Huang [50:23]
Yeah, I think it's so fascinating because speaking with you last week, and speaking with you now, I've come to realize how radical Asian Americans were, and I think, because growing up in the political climate that we are, I think, Asian Americans more moderate, or sometimes conservative. But the whole point of Asian American Studies was to like train students, as you said, last week, for example, was to teach students Cantonese, so they could go back to Chinatowns and serve their communities, mobilize their communities. But I feel like now PWI is have seemed to weaponized Asian American Studies and a lot of like different Ethnic Programs for their own use to check off a box saying that we are.. "We stand for diversity. Here's an example of DEI". And the vocabulary that was once used to train students to be community builders to mobilize them to now use just for higher education and academic research, and helping students kind of find jobs, almost like neoliberalism kind of like different ways, as opposed to the original intent of Asian recommendations. Could you tell us a little bit how to get students and faculty to get involved to kind of get [back] to the original principles of the purpose of these Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies?

Tsiwen Law [51:34]
Yeah, well, if you look at the principles of the Asian American political lines, it was to transform the society into one that would be fair and equal. Here, understanding AAPI, right. And it talks about, you know, the reason that things were against, but we're in favor of transforming the society because it's capitalism that perpetuates the inequalities. And so it's intimately tied in with a struggle against racism, that you have to be against capitalism. Capitalism is not in the Constitution. It's just, you know, a choice of those who benefit from... the Elon Musk's and all those other people. But it's not the choice of most ordinary people that, you know, they'd have to continue to live in high inequality and in poverty, constant poverty. So. So anyway, that right from the beginning, though, the goal was, although there's not much discussion about capitalism, American Studies [Laughs], I don't think, is that capitalism was the source of mistreatment of Asian Americans. the inequality, right, and the exclusion of Asian Americans through immigration, and through citizenship. Intimately tied in with demands of the capitalist, the Stanford's, the Crockers, that build railways and, you know, turn California into this booming economy, right. So, but it was racism that allowed them to pay very low wages and basically organize a strike, they will fire you and get rid of you. So that was the whole approach. We use violence against you hesitate to use violence, just like they did against African Americans, right. Or former slaves tried to organize in the sharecropper fields, you know. So, right from the very beginning, I mean, if anybody reads, you know, we're talking about bringing an end to capitalism and trying to create a foundation for a different society, which we wouldn't have to constantly confront racism and its effects.

Divya Aikat [54:27]
Yeah, I think that's a really good point you make about the community building and looking to what what's been done with African American Studies and what different racial and ethnic groups have accomplished and their positions in society at UNC with our work. A lot has been inspired and supported by Black, Latino Chicano, Indigenous Studies, programs and different scholars. So You talked about how... while the third road world college wasn't instituted, there were four specific ethnic studies, concentrations. And I wanted to ask what has intersectional solidarity and community building look like for you in your past work with the Third World Liberation Front? And then moving forward? How has that changed your lens having that at such an early stage in your life?

Tsiwen Law [55:29]
Well, I mean, I never personally got involved in, you know, what was happening in Mexican American studies or Native American studies, you know, I know that if any of the other programs needed our support, we will always come to their support. But any particulars, it was generally. I mean, there were fights in 1974, against the administration wanted to cut down program, but at that time, I was already gone in on campus anymore. So my role as far as the studies program was much more limited by '71 '72, rating, graduating [Laughs]. So I had a pretty limited role, my concern was always that the institution was going to become, you know, tied to the administration. And all the research rather than being focused on the needs of the community would be geared towards, you know, what the administration thought was good academic research for purposes of publishing and, you know, getting people high marks on, you know, other faculty tenure, you know, applications and things like that, right, that, that these things would be institutionalized, which is why I focus more on, you know, the student activism issues that that need to be addressed. And less on... I figured, those people that can take care of their academics [Laughs}, they go into, you know, it was just that, at a certain point, ...that's one of the things that my friend Emile does is concerned about, is a, they disbanded the community studies, courses. And, you know, when they did that the program lost its community orientation. Now, originally, it was the community courses were supposed to have, drawing people from the community to be advisors, like an advisory council over the program, so to oversee the direction of the program and say, "Okay, you are meeting the needs of the community, or you're not meeting the needs of the community, this is what we need, we need people to come out and help us register to vote or do things that help us get empowered and learn how to run for office and things like that. And you're not doing that". You know, well, that once they decided not to have those community studies, then it all pretty much disbanded any attempt to have a connection with the community. They came purely academic, which is the purpose of it, which is, you know, the direction that unfortunately, takes over when you don't have an active student movement to keep you on track or, you know, keep the community involved with with the, with the studies program. Because I'll ask professors now, what are you doing with the community, they won't have anything to say [Laughs] No connection, right. They're just focused on their research and, you know, papers that have to be published and you know, so... that's the thing that you need to think about when you're designing this program for adoption by UNC is, you know, how do you resist that institutionalization so that it just goes sidewide and doesn't meet the needs of the community.

Christina Huang [59:41]
How do you think... professors and students continue to meet the needs of the community because we talked with Dr. Nayah Shah, who was one of the first tenure hire Asian Americanist at SUNY Binghamton. And he said once they got the faculty, the movement kind of waned. Students feel like we have this program. But, you know, I guess there's not as much from.... what we see as well from after speaking with students at Duke, they're also not really happy with the implementation because it's just, it's just implementation of saying, Okay, we met your needs, but it's not... helping their community.

Divya Aikat [1:00:19]
And even at UNC, we had, we launched our Asian American Center in 2020 and it's currently the only Asian American Center in the US Southeast. But there was this really strong Asian American student push and then a lot of the members that we spoke to were really dissatisfied with how it was implemented and how it was kind of an institutional token rather than a community spot and a spot for the student. So how would you recommend that when pushing for these movements, especially within the limit of four years, like Christina was saying that people focus on community from the student and how we convince institutions to have that community last been implementing the program?

Tsiwen Law [1:01:05]
Again, I go back to saying that your student organizations, your Asian American student organizations need to be focused on on those questions, and how to build the continuity for the struggle from, you know, as people graduate, right and disappear, or they go off into wherever they go, and you have to continue to build continuity all the way down through the earlier years, the incoming students so that they can take over and continue that struggle, and understand that it's part of what they have to take on is to ensure that the institution has community studies programs, that connect students with the community that connect the professor's with the community that connect the programs with the community, what and know what the community needs are, right. I mean, you know, this this COVID stuff when you know, a hit, there are very few, you know, programs that will come out of any schools that are talking about what's the research data on Asian Americans and COVID? You know, what, long COVID? And what vaccination resources are being made available through, you know, there are all these questions, right, that need to be addressed. And, you know, where's the connection from, you know, the schools. Because, you know, the campuses are kind of at a loss, they don't really know what the numbers are, they're just starting to gather this, you know, the CDC just started to gather numbers and trying to see, you know, where the trends on under vaccination, non vaccination, because there were a lot of MIS information coming out around this time. Right. But, you know, was that happening in Asian languages? You know, things like that, right. I mean, because every time we have to deal with an issue, we're talking about 13-15 Asian languages, no matter what the issue is, right. Automatically, we have to deal with 13-15 Asian languages. Right. And it varies from place to place. Right. Some, some places that have more people speak Gujarati, and some places speak, you know, Nepalese, and some places, you know, so, you, unless you're connected into the community, you don't know which languages the, you know, Department of Health should be dealing with, right, you got to have, you know, people who are in those communities and speaking up, say, you know, we need the vaccine for our children to get vaccinated and go back to school, right. Where's the, you know, what are the vaccination programs, when have they become available? Yeah. So it's, it's all of those issues, you know, we've got Filipino nurses dying at higher rates than alien group, you know, and what's being done about that, why, why, you know, is that continuing to happen, right. You know, so. So it takes, like a student organization and, you know, an advocacy group connected with the community to work together. And that's why I work with the OCA, the organization, Chinese Americans. We have these broad kind of programs to address community needs. Both in terms of voter registration, vaccination issues and whatever else is making sure that we target the right languages for right groups, right. Other groups don't have to deal with that issue. They have one Spanish leaf flyer, we got to bring 10 different [Laughs], right. And so did they make provision for this? You know, who's paying for it? I don't want to pay for the translators to do all that stuff. No, you need to write, you have people dying, you can't not have this. So those are the kinds of things that we deal with. Now. I mean, because we know there's an executive order out there, that President Clinton signed that, you know, mandates under Title VI that everything that is from a federal agency has to be translated into the relevant languages. So we have a basis on which we say, you know, you got to do this, if you've got federal money, your local health department got money to do vaccination outreach, then you've got to make it available in multiple languages, right. So executive order.

Christina Huang [1:06:15]
I didn't know that.

Tsiwen Law [1:06:17]
Yeah, Title VI, because the government can be sued under Title VI for failing to do that.

Divya Aikat [1:06:22]
And I think that one thing that kind of building off of your point, in keeping these community and institutional ties and making this sustainable and sustainable for both the mission that it was created for, and then the current group that it continues serving, when we think about the student advocacy work and student activism, one strong limit that we have is that undergraduate students are only there for four years. And right now Christina and I have been working on this students for Asian American Studies movement at UNC for about a year. But one thing that we worry about and that other student activists have told us is that institutions can wait people out and just once that initial group of dedicated students leaves, if there's not a significant push afterwards, that just kind of dies, and they're able to ignore it, and they're able to not address those concerns that students brought up. And so with the Third World Liberation Front, there was such a strong push, and so many people backing it, but with smaller movements, or that may not have as many people or students to continue it. Do you have any advice about how students can keep this push going beyond their four years at an institution or pass the baton on to others? Well,

Tsiwen Law [1:07:55]
One way is to incorporate faculty into your organization's activities, because they are going to be there, right. If they have tenure, they're gonna be there. If they don't think they're seeking tenure, they're gonna be hanging around. But the student organizations have to institutionalize a way of training the new recruits, just like I was recruited, minding my own business [Laughs] "Join the Asian American Studies Movement!" [Banging the table]. "Who are you?" and so actively recruit and train them to become the next leaders right transition into, so that.. you have to have like a very concrete program by which you continue to build leadership. The leadership is critical by as you're gonna have to be able to build leadership, leadership that is patient, because, you know, after the strike was over, there's a lot of people who say, "Oh, we don't have to do anything anymore, just go to classes ,and you know, whatever". Well, but we kept the Asian American organization around because the war kept going on and the war was heating up. And you know, there were a lot of things to address in terms of the war, right. Are any professors involved in the napalm research, right. Dioxins and stuff in order whatever you know, and better ways to training dolphins to carry bombs... off the coast of Vietnam, often Mekong Delta with bombs strapped on their backs, and all kinds of stuff going on that you don't even realize the federal government is paying for the US Navy was paying for. And so you know, first of all, you got to do this research. And then you got to act on it right. So you know, and so you got to teach that next generation each, you know, incoming class, how to take on these things, what you've been doing and why. And you know what's going to happen. You can't rely on the institution of Asian American Studies, what you hope is that every year you get a new crop of students who are educated now, and they're ready to like be part of your movement. And that you should incorporate them into that program should invite you to speak to the students and say, "Help, we have a student group here. So you don't have to, like do what they used to do, which is go around and vote people who, while they're eating lunch and stuff" .And you know, that people learn that there's a group that addresses what's going on in the larger picture, right. So that you your education is going towards some something of value to the society, the community, whatever, but you know, that, that you're getting a way to be involved in in making your education account, right. And that's really the function of the student group to develop that continuity.

Christina Huang [1:11:31]
Yeah, that's a really good explanation to some of that we've been also shared with other student groups have been struggling with. And I think, this idea of community... you were showing us... we have "Asian Americans: the Movement, and the Moment" in front of us, and you're showing me all these different activists that you've worked with, and you're able to kind of point out, you were showing us all these different people and how you're still connected with a lot of them. I want to give you the opportunity to share what you shared with us and about this book and the meaning can each pictures. If you want to talk about any of the pictures that you want, that you showed us,

Tsiwen Law [1:12:07]
Oh. Okay. See? All right, well, I think this is the picture where it all started, right. This is the picture, of Sather Gate. And how we actually shut down the university. Eventually, this is where we started to block people from crossing on onto the other side of campus as a way to get attention and get support for shutting down the university. And it took a lot of doing because we had to, again, withstand the tear gas, and you know, you don't go to school thinking, "I gotta get gas masks to go to school". So not really part of your equipment. But yeah, that. So that picture is kind of important to show how it was a mass movement, but led by Third World Students. And I think what was interesting is that in the other communities to African American Mexican American communities, there were a lot of former veterans and they had a different view. Now, my one of my mentors was Richard Aoki, who was a graduate student, you heard of Richard?

Christina Huang [1:13:42]
No.

Tsiwen Law [1:13:43]
Oh, so he was Japanese American, but he had served in Vietnam, served in the military and so he was tasked with getting his graduate degree. But he also was a member of the Black Panther Party. He was not only a member, he was like the Field Marshal, right. He was up in the leadership for the Black Panther Party in Oakland. So... he had a different view of things. Right. So, you know, from his viewpoint, some of this dealing with police was kind of small. I mean, they'd been on the front lines where it's being shot at, right. Vietnamese soldiers. So for former veterans this dealing with it was small time stuff. For us. It was big because you'd never... freshman year [Laughs]. It was a big deal. But anyway, so it helped us sustain moving in the sense that they had a longer term perspective. This is we're not going away. You know, we serve this country, and we deserve to have the kind of education that meets our needs. You know, now they were other than we're paying through the GI bill for their education, but you know, they'd earned it. Right served in the armed services. So they had, yeah, they brought a somewhat different viewpoint to the whole struggle. Which was and then some of them had been veterans have other struggles, you know, in the leadership, but it helps to keep us in perspective, you know, what this is. For them, this is the small stuff [Laughs] Anyways... another picture. Let's see. The one where we show the this one right. This is the picture of Glenn Watanabe and Stan Abe two of the members, Asian American Political Alliance, they were holding the signs that were used during the blocking of the Sather gate, right. And then if people then decided they wanted to rush the line, and barge their way through physically, then they would take the signs off and use the sticks to block people from going through. So that's why. If you weren't there you wouldn't understand the picture

Christina Huang [1:16:56]
That's a big that's a big gate. So there have been multiple multiple people with this stick.

Tsiwen Law [1:17:00]
Oh, yeah, there were a lot of people. Everybody who was in the, in the line across the gate was holding the stick people like me, who were the steers, it didn't have a sign. So... we just say, "Hey, take the bridge down" [Laugh]. It would be safer for you. You don't have to do this. Yeah. [Flipping through book] And Floyd Yuen, one of the leaders, one of my mentors during the strike, And then there was Harvey Dome is also in the book, it's important to, you know, read the information in this, there are not that many who were part of the original strike that are in the book, because this is not locally focused on just this there was strike per se, although it was the beginning of the movement, right. Back in 1968. And a lot of the activity of the movement happened at Berkeley and San Francisco State. So let's see. I mean, but you know, there were activists, you know, that all around the country who were involved in the anti war movement come together because they saw the same things we saw with napalm and, you know, the bombing of Vietnamese communities with Agent Orange right, and all the other things that came with the My Lai Massacre and so on, right. So, it was... a broad movement. And I think, well, it doesn't have a picture here of the house where the Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka first came together to start the, the Asian American Political Alliance on on campus. So, in 2019, as part of the 50th anniversary of the Asian American Political Alliance, the city of Berkeley, adopted a resolution recognizing the beginning of the Asian American movement, which was kind of taken for granted and put a plaque at the at the building up in north Berkeley where it is. Yeah, there. There's the plaque that documents when when the movement started and yeah, because I didn't live there. I didn't. I didn't know that was the house [Laughs]. I mean, nobody really thought it thought it would be sold historical fact, right. We were just engaged in how we would set up the studies program, you know. And change the course of education so that, you know, Asian Americans would have educational opportunities as well as scholarly opportunities as well as the ability to develop skills for empowerment of their communities. So you know, to a certain extent we've accomplished some of that.

Divya Aikat [1:20:42]
Yeah. Yeah, thank you for sharing. I think that the work that you did, and that Third World Liberation Front inspires us so much, because we couldn't have our Asian American Center or even be pushing for what we're doing right now, without the incredible work that activists like you put in back then? And do you have anything else that you wanted to share that you wanted to touch on, about your work or your experience, or any advice that you would have for future students working on this.

Tsiwen Law [1:21:14]
I would suggest going back to the original principles of Asian American political lines to kind of get your course we always talk about going back to our Asian American history as a way of guiding us in terms of what needs to be done. And that now is part of our history. Whether you like it or not, but that's, you know, and that we need to synthesize as part of the Asian American identity and the principles. Some way to address the role of capitalism in perpetuating racism. And that, you know, we're going to continue to have these extreme inequalities that are race based, so long as and it is not going to go away without racism without capitalism. It's fundamental to the way capitalism operates. And part of what we did back then was I'm trying to understand why the United States would be involved in such an imperialist war for so long, and why, you know, just involved in continuous wars after even after I mean, in Afghanistan for 20 years, right, and Iraq and just non stop, and now we're supporting Ukraine and Russia engaged in these things that have huge impacts on o our world, and we need to have a voice there that says, you know, when are we going to start looking for peace, and a way to protect people's lives instead of, you know, ruining them? There's a cost to it dramatic costs to people dying and losing their families and having to be refugees to other parts of the world. You know, we continue to perpetuate these kinds of contentions. And the only people that benefited are those are the war mongers who sell the cluster bomb. Why are we giving cluster bombs to Ukraine? That's, to me, there's an Asian American issue there, which is, you know, they use these cluster bombs in Southeast Asia to kill people in as many ways as possible, right. We have the leftovers of all the bombs that are embedded in, I mean, one of the best paying jobs in Cambodia is what.. is a bomb finder, somebody who goes through the land to find where these landmines are? Think about that. That's one of the better paying jobs in Cambodia. And, you know, every fourth bomb or something, they die, right, it goes off, the main line goes off, well. Why are we doing that? You know, what, who benefits from selling the landmines? And who's gonna benefit from selling these cluster policies? You know, why do we need businesses like that? You know, education for health for other things, you know, but no, we're given away cluster bombs.

Christina Huang [1:24:44]
Fully and this last one, I just thought of a question. So do you think when we're pushing for these initiatives, or either it be programs or against these wartime efforts, right, because of these racist ideals, do you think we'll always need to have some sort of protests or direct action against these institutions. Or is there a way to peacefully like negotiate without having to, like pick up the metaphorical pitchforks and like, you know, protest and go to the streets.

Tsiwen Law [1:25:16]
You will always have a combination of different tactics and, you know, methods of addressing these, whether it's through Congress to say, you know, no more funding for cluster bombs, what was the point? And, and on the other hand, you know, when time calls for it when it's pretty outrageous, like the My Lai Massacre, when, you know, the only person that's court martialed is one person for sitting in homes or for years. What kind of outcome is that? You know? And same with, you know, some of the Supreme Court decisions, you know, the judges should not think that they can do this in isolation that, you know, these decisions that have no impact. Yeah. So, so there's a time when, you know, it's appropriate to organize a protest, sometimes, you know, it's things are slow and you need to just get petition signed. Or at least you're bringing issues. Did you know people to sign petitions to say no, "I'm against this, I don't want to see more cluster bombs with US labels on it". You know, we've been through this, why are we continue to do this? No, all this education comes down to clustering. I recommend that people read this, this book, right. Hear from some of the others. Like my friend Emil De Guzman, he also has been involved in this fight. Since you know, when we were both freshmen. I said he was on the inside and they the police dragged him out. What you don't see in this picture is the horses so they charged on horses six times.

Divya Aikat [1:27:37]
Oh, my goodness.

Tsiwen Law [1:27:39]
To break through these people. All we did, you know, we didn't have any weapons. We just had locked arms, five lines around the front of the building. And this was like three, four in the morning. And they charged on horseback six times. Before they weren't able to break through the people their union being charged by a police. That's the horse was a pretty big. Yeah, and they have big batons on top of that, and they're just wacking away. And I understand that... why would they use such violent methods against, you know, but this was a mass eviction. I mean, all the organizations that were there the hotel, it's a mass evictions not just one person is taking out. And it was, you know, these are people of color, right. Filipino, elderly Chinese and so there are things in the picture unless you talk to the people who are there, you don't know. Yeah, so that's important that you're what you're doing is to find out, you know, learn about what's behind the pictures.

Divya Aikat [1:29:08]
Thank you so much for sharing this. This has been such an impactful oral history and it's been amazing to hear your story and all of the recollections of the activism climate and the environment at Berkeley at the time. Yeah, thank you. Yeah.