Activist tells students to work for change

Political activist Yuri Kochiyama urged Asian students to work toward increasing communication between minority groups, and stressed that their ideas and commitments will determine whether anti-Asian violence and racial tension can eventually be eased. In a speech at the Greenfield Intercultural Center last night, Kochiyama taked about a recent burst of "Asian-phobia" -- violence against Asian-Americans which she said results from an inflow of Southeast Asian refugees and the Japanese trade imbalance. In particular, she cited last summer's confrontation in Philadelphia between a Korean store-owner who shot and killed a black man who attempted to rob him. Kochiyama told students that there must be a continuous and sincere effort to effect change from both sides -- not only from groups working together, but also from individuals working one-on-one with each other in an attempt to increase communication and understanding. Kochiyama, who worked with Malcolm X during the 1960s, said she was an ignorant of politics and culturally unaware until World War II, when evacuation and persecution of Japanese Americans -- including her family -- made her more aware of her Asian-American heritage. She was an inmate at a concentration camp in Arkansas during the war. However, she said did not become a political activist until the outbreak of the Vietnam War. "I finally became aware of the word 'movement,' " Kochiyama said. "We saw the Vietnam War with an Asian perspective and saw it as racism. Our boys were wearing American clothes and were looking like the enemy." She said the fight for Asian-American equality was also triggered by the Fight for Ethnic Studies in 1968, a movement which started at San Francisco State University and steadily spread eastward, where it found mass support in Columbia University. Students actively participated in the open forum following the hour-long speech. Wharton freshman Helen Law said she thought that listening to Kochiyama was a "good experience, because she inspired youth not to remain apathetic and complacent to Asian-American and other political issues."

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