SAN FRANCISCO, THURSDAY, MAY 31, 2007 - Several prominent Asian American faithleaders in the Bay Area will announce their public support of lesbian and gay families and equality at a press conference in San Francisco Chinatown onThursday, May 31, 2007, from 10:30-11:30 am, at Chinese for Affirmative Action(17 Walter Lum Place, nearby Portsmouth Square), to coincide with end of APIHeritage Month and the start of LGBT Pride Month.
Confirmed speakers for theevent include: Rev. Calvin Chinn, Rev. Jeffrey Kuan, Rev. John Oda, Rev. DeborahLee, Rev. Michael Yoshii, and Rev. Elizabeth Leung. The event will mark the first time a coalition of Asian American faith leaders speaks out in support oflesbian and gay families and equality.
imagine us Represent 2 Witness Summer Youth Leadership Institute for Asian Pacific Islanders and other youth of color ages 16-19 lower income and LGBT persons encouraged to apply
June 23 - July 7, 2007 Pacific School of Religion Berkeley, CA
IMAGINE US
DOING theology (the study and action of God in the world) dynamic Bible study martial arts community action
MEETING WITH poets professors community leaders DJs muralists
DEVELOPING LEADERSHIP through a soul-stretching process called critical faith
CELEBRATING AND WORSHIPPING WITH young leaders age 16-19 of Asian, Pacific Islander, African American, Latino, and other ethnic background
IMAGINE US creating a just and blessed future being the future the future is now
Get your discipleship on
R2W is an institute in which you live, study, and celebrate living the collegiate lifestyle for 14 days with other high school-aged students in the beautiful Pacific School of Religion/UC Berkeley community. R2W uses the Asian Pacific Islander experience as a lense to see and act on problems and solutions as new Christian leaders. Participants receive a full scholarship covering transportation to and from Berkeley, room, board, and activities. Enrollees pay a registration fee of $150. We encourage your church to support you by covering this fee. (A fee waiver is available to all with financial hardship.)
See what's up at: www.represent2witness.org and www.myspace.com/represent2witness or contact Michael, Lauren, or Crystal at mjames@psr.edu or (510) 849-8202
On the eastern side of the Sierras of California, Mt. Williamson, the second highest peak after Mt. Whitney on the continental United States, is the summit that stands tall behind the cemetery obelisk of Manzanar, the war relocation center of World War II, where 10,000 people of Japanese descent were displaced from Los Angeles. From April 26-29, 2007, on the annual pilgrimage to Manzanar, our community pilgrimage class, co-sponsored by the Pacific School of Religion and the PANA Institute, joined with over 700 other pilgrims who were from a diversity of cultural and religious backgrounds. There, in the hot desert sun by the cemetery obelisk with its inscription “This is the place of consolation for all humanity,” we gathered to remember, to mourn, to listen, to pray, to dance with hope and gratitude for the imprints of compassion on our hearts. We literally encountered imprints of hope in the stone and waterfall gardens created by the internees for the contemplation of restorative beauty amidst the unjust desert incarceration - the unfailing stream of integrity, the flowing waters towards justice. Imprints of hope: Birdsong on barbed wire. Dawn and dusk at Manzanar, communion with the living and the dead. Echoes of children’s voices, both past and present. Youth reaching out across the barbed wire realities of today. Elders and ancestors passing on wisdom and strength for the journey.
Community Poem written by 2007 PANA Pilgrims to Manzanar 4/29/07
Empty desert, intense sun, lonely stars, snowy mountains. Silence. Racist bullies calling us names, Dirty Japs they yell, assaulting immigrants. Nanay. Betrayed, Disrespected, We live in cold fear, Shamed by acts of injustice. Silence. Sorrowful eyes climbing onto departing buses, arriving at foreign barracks. Silence. Not understanding a child. A baby left behind, a baby’s grave... The loss of loved ones. Silence. Huge lands, unrelenting Desolation.
Consolation
Prayer flags. Chikara. Love. Family. Stories. Black crow on obelisk. Forgive.
Remembrance.
Interpretive Center. Gardens and pond. Reclaim Revolt Remain Re-emergence Remembrance.
Supportive community. Interfaith ceremony Together in pain. Obelisk Small resistance Adaptation. Reparation.
Remembrance.
Taiko drums Young voices Living Quakers Singing a hymn with Toru Singing freely in Japanese.
********* KIZUNA by Tomo Nishiyama, translated by Tomo Nishiyama
We have many expression of Love. We have many expression of Hope. We have many expression of faith. These are important things in our life. We keep expressing.
Now, let us focus on anther thing.
We are here, now. We are here beyond race, language, country, origin, and religion… We are share time and place. It is truth. Nobody question it.
There is a special relationship in here. We call it “ KIZUNA”
Let’s just feel “KIZUNA” We don’t need special pray, chant, action…
Just feel “KIZUNA”.
“絆”(KIZUNA)
たくさんの愛がある (takusan no ai ga aru) たくさんの希望がある (takusan no kibou ga aru) たくさんの信じることがある (takusan no shinzirukoto ga aru) そのすべては私たちにとって大切なこと (sonosubete ha watassitatinitotte taisetunakoto) そして続いていくこと (sosite tuduitteikukoto)
そして今、もう一つのことに目を向けてみよう (sosite ima mouhitotunokotoni mewo muketemiyou)
今、ここにいること(ima kokoni irukoto) 人種、言葉、国、宗教、祖先の違いを超えて、私たちはここにいる (zinsyu kotoba kuni syuukyou sosen no tigaiwokoete watasitatiha kokoni iru) 時間と空間をともにしている(zikan to kuukan wo tomonisiteiru) それは誰も疑えないこと(soreha daremo utagaenaikoto)
特別なつながりがここにはある(tokubetuna tunagari ga kokoniha aru) それを“絆”と呼ぼう( sorewo KIZUNA to yobou)
“絆”ただそれを感じよう (KIZUNA tada sorewo kanziyou) 特別な祈りやことばはいらない (tokubetuna inori ya kotoba ha iranai)
ただ感じる(tada kannziru) ただ此処にいる(tada kokoniiru)
*******
By Maikiko James
Remember always A life in a storm of dust Four years of gray and, if you listen closely, Subtle whispers of laughter I went back to be reminded And instead found what I did not expect Painful hope And proof that we rise stronger From the ash Bonded in this one life we are given We sustain from our place in the palms of our ancestors Carried through the day By kizuna May we find more each moment We remember
*****
By Lauren Quock
Day 1 Motivation: Method Everyone has a story We can teach from our stories We can learn from each others' stories We are all teachers and students We don't need to have degrees to have knowledge Some people go up to a mountain far away from civilization to find the sacred Others go into the community to find the sacred among the people
Once I got to the class I knew I had to come on the pilgrimage for the content Anti-Asian hate written into law silence from fear that would last generations
What do I bring? Sketchbook and pencil film and 2 cameras To document Write ourselves into the textbooks where they left us out Mark by mural my witness that we are active participants in history
My grandparents -- we are standing on the shoulders of giants
On the six hour bus ride We pass by a state prison In the middle of empty rolling hills Rows of farm crops A Wal-mart They are still incarcerating us Shipping us out into the middle of nowhere So no one has to see us They are still separating us from our families Stripping us of our freedom and privacy from guard towers guns pointed inward Barbed wire cuts us offfrom the rest of the world
Day 2
I laid my hand on your grave Cesar Estrada Chavez 1922-1993 images of sweat beading and dripping from brown foreheads hands in fertile soil picking fruit you can't afford to buy espaldas sore from crouching and bending all day I feel your strength in the rock I will keep on fighting believing Si se puede! Yes we can.
Signs of resistance Pleasure gardens in the middle of the desert camp No tears Resistance
Day 3
Today The tears came Three remaining living members of the 442nd rose to lead the pledge of allegiance Red White and Blue sailor's hat War patches In the midst of the camps These men volunteered to fight for their country The country that was interning them! To prove their loyalty Todaythe tears came they were so loyal I think I would have spit in the faces of the recruiters shouted an angry "Fuck you!" But they volunteered
They were sent to Italy to take a position that nobody else had been able to Landed in the middle of the night Ordered to scale a cliff "If you fall" they were told "Don't cry out It will give away our position" And some of them fell And they did not cry out And the 442nd took the cliff
Today the tears came A headstone in the cemetery Baby Jerry Ogawa How painful the memory must have been For your family to leave you
A dusty piece of broken porcelain a plate a rusty tin can barbed wire wrapped up and tossed aside I feel your spirits here You were here How could they do this to you?
Today the tears came Today we came To visit the graves To remember the dead and the living Today the tears came
Return
It's been 10 days since I got back little time to reflect since then so now before the memory fades before my hope dissipates:
Running free on land with barbed wire boundaries real not remembered but 60 years ago
Singing Dancing Playing the guitar saxophone freely expressing rage sadness survival life 'til all hours of the night no searchlights from guard towers roaming
Toru says he's not a Christian anymore But if he can forgive And hope And live singing serenading So can I.
Podcast of Starr King student Shelley Page as she reads the poems she wrote in response to her pilgrimage to Manzanar.
*******
i wrote this on the bus, on the our return home. -- Michael Sepidoza Campos
Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Theological Union Berkeley, CA ... Circles. And more circles. Words woven among stories. Anger. Despair. Doubt. Hope. How does one foster life In a place of desolation? In the context of paranoia?
I think of Marjorie. I think of the many prayers. Silences offered. Quiet tears shed. Attempts to hide years of feelings. Shame still persists. Shame of what?
Vulnerability. Weakness. Stoicism in the face of dehumanization. Stoicism as a response to shame. I will be as a rock, unmoved. Even as I am stripped. Even as I am shamed.
I think of the gardens. Fruits of one's anger. Spaces of defiance. Dispelling the paralysis of fate. Stoicism bearing life. Where one chooses not to be unmoved. Where one effects life upon land. Upon barrenness. Lifelessness.
How does one breathe While suffocating beneath fear? How does one see Beyond the veil of dust storms? How does one hear Bereft of community? Families that foster love?
How does one live?
But life persists. Is relentless. Where terrain, though desolate Channel a people's spirit to hope deeply. To see beneath the veneer of discomfort. To claim life upon a land that has both Spat and embraced them.
There is stunning hope here. There is gratitude from which I draw life.
I the foreigner. The stranger. Encounter the voices of our common ancestors. And I learn to see with their eyes. Hear with their ears. And so hope as deeply.
I am grateful. I stand in paths of circles. Enveloped by voices of intersecting stories. And so, I am ennobled by a humanity That stands fundamentally the same, A common grounding upon life. Of circles. Of cyclical immersions In life and death. Between hope and despair. Circles. Circles. Circles.
Understanding Racial Trauma as a Practice to Discover and Liberate Oneself and Community Implications for Asians in the Americas
Tuesday, May 8 4:00pm
PANA Offices, 2357 LeConte Ave, Berkeley, CA 94709
Gordon Lee was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. In the fall of 1967 he went to Columbia University to study Economics. He became involved in the Asian-American movement in the spring of 1970 when students at Columbia took over Kent Hall demanding an ethnic studies program. He was active in an uptown Asian American organization fighting for squatters' rights. He was one of the original members of the Asian Media Collective, and soon thereafter moved to New York Chinatown. After leaving New York he joined Third Arm, a community organization in Honolulu, Chinatown and spent many years there assisting residents to fight urban renewal. Subsequently, he became an attorney. In addition to his legal work, he has developed a health insurance counseling and assistance program for seniors. He wrote, directed and produced a video on Japanese internment in Hawaii during World War II. He holds a Masters in Public Health that focused on the Anti-eviction struggle in Oakland, Chinatown. He has recently completed a Ph.D. in depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa barbara, California. The title of his dissertation is: "Excavating Memory, Reconstructing Narrative: The Nikkei Diaspora and the Transnational Experience from 1868-1941."
