From: hirota@sluggo.sdsc.edu (Bryan Hirota)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: Fight the Power
Date: 24 Jul 1992 10:29:49 GMT
Organization: San Diego Supercomputer Center
NNTP-Posting-Host: sluggo.sdsc.edu
Summary: I like cheese
Keywords: all fall down

The time couldn't be now.  The place couldn't be here.

	Vincent Chin	| Murderd in Detroit for looking Japanese 	|
	
	Stockon School  | Massacred in Stockon for being of SouthEast	|
	      Children	| Asian extraction				|

	Jim Loo		| Looked just too damn Vietnamese.  Murded.	|

	Povvi & Itali	| Some Samoans are just too damn big.  Result?	|
	 Tualoaolelei	| A combined NINETEEN gunshot wounds in the	|
			| side and back.  [note:  police clips have a	|
			| maximum of 15 bullets]  Excessive force?	|
			| Undecided   -    Hung Jury.  Mistrial.	|
	
		Extra Bonus Quote:
			"the level of violence considerably exceeds
			 the level of violence in the (Rodney) King case"
					- Deputy Dist. Atty, Richard Healy
	
	Senator Ernest 	| And I quote - "You should draw a picture of	|
	   F. Hollings	| a mushroom cloud and put below it... made in	|
			| America by lazy and illiterate workers and	|
			| tested in Japan." - as told to cheering	|
			| factory workers in South Carolina.		|

	Long Duck Dong	| "whot's...hoppeneeeng...hot...stuff?"		|


"The students all over the world are the ones who bring about a change;
old people don't bring about a change.  I mean I'm not saying this
against anybody that's old - because if you're ready for some action you're
not old,  I don't care how old you are.  But if you're not ready for some
action, I don't care how young you are, you're old ... Some of us get too
old while we're still in our teens."
			- Malcom X

We are the instruments to whom the task falls to shape the future of our
people.  Our forefathers fought, bled, and even died so we can enjoy the
benefits that we do today.  Now, the guantlet has been thrown to us, let
us not pass up the oportunity to pick it up.  There is no turning back,
only now our struggle must be revolutionary as opposed to evolutionary.

"I say bluntly that you have had a generation ... who actually believed
that you could negotiate, negotiate, negotiate and eventually get some kind
of independence.  But you're getting a new generationg that has been growing
right now,  and they're beginning to think with their own minds and see that
you can't negotiate up on freedom nowadays.  If something is yours by right,
then fight for it or shut up.  If you can't fight for it, then forget it."
			- Malcom X

There are those who say that to end racism, one must educate the racists.
What are we supposed to do in the intern?  Suffer in silence,  I suppose is 
the appropriate response.  To this I do not agree.  The burden should
not be on our shoulders to educate the ignorate hate mongers of the world.
I am not naive enough to believe that racism can ever be ended.  What
should be of a more immediate concern to us is securing our rights
as a group and gaining the respect that we so desperately need.

"As long as we dilly-dally, and try to appear more moral than anybody else
by taking a beating without fighting back, why, people will continue to
refer to us as very moral persons and very well-disciplined persons, but
at the same time we'll be just as far back a hundred years from now as
we are today.  So I believe that fighting against those who fight against us
is the best course of action in any situation.  Not fighting against
anybody, but fighting against anybody who fights against us."
			- Malcom X

The time is now.  The place is here.

The time to unify has come.  We have been told so often and for so long that
we are inferior,  that sadly many of us believe it.  We are a generation
full of self-haters and doubters,  we must break free of our bondage -
whether that bondage be social, economic or political.  We have a hard
road ahead of us, but it is one we must travel if we are to get our just
rewards.

I'll leave you with this parting thought.

"Who is a patriot?  He is a person who loves his country.  He is not a person
who says he loves his country.  He is not even a person who shouts or swears
or recites or sings his love of his country.  He is one who *cares* deeply
about the happiness and well-being of his country and all it's people.
Patriotism is an emotion of love directed by a critical intelligence.  A
true patriot will always demand the highest standards of his country and
accept nothing but the best from his people.  He will be outspoken in
condemnation of their short-comings without giving way to superiority, despair
or cynicism.  That is my idea of a patriot."
			- Chinua Achebe,  Prominant figure in Nigeran
					                    politics.

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Bryan Hirota		"waaaare....eeeez...lew..10..ant....Rip..LEEEE???"
hirota@sdsc.edu					- The only asian in Alien^3
bhirota@ucsd.edu
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