Contemporary Asian American Activism & Intergeneration Perspectives:
An Activist-Scholar Symposium
Professors Diane Fujino of UCSB and Robyn Rodriguez of UC Davis convened a national symposium on symposium on Asian American grassroots activism, held at UC Santa Barbara from January 24 to 26, 2019. The symposium brought together scholars, students, activists and members of the public to discuss the past and future of Asian American activism and addressed topics in immigrant rights, environmental justice, labor, housing, education, prisons, state violence, intersectional racialized gender and heteropatriarchy, and international solidarity work. The event was a collaboration among the Asian American Studies departments at UC Santa Barbara, UC Davis, and the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA. The agenda for the event was as follows:
Thursday, January 24, 2019, 6-7:30 PM, UCSB MultiCultural Center
Keynote Speaker, Pam Tau Lee: The Struggle to Abolish Environmental Racism: Asian Radical Imaginings from the Homeland to our Frontlines
Rooted in 50 years of Asian American radical activism and environmental justice organizing, Pam Tau Lee addresses the question, “Can an Asian radical perspective contribute toward achieving environmental justice?” Pam Lee is a founding member of the Chinese Progressive Association, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, and the Just Transition Alliance.
Friday, January 25, 2019, 11 AM – 3 PM, UCSB MultiCultural Center
Asian American Activism Symposium
Speakers included:
- Angelica Cabande, South of Market Community Action Network
- Ga Young Chung, Korean undocumented immigration rights
- May Fu, University of San Diego, educational transformation
- Soya Jung, Change Lab
- Pam Tau Lee, Asian American environmental justice organizer and veteran Asian American Movement activist
- Irma Shauf-Bajar, GABRIELA USA
- Alex Tom, Chinese Progressive Association
- Eddy Zheng, Asian Prisoner Support Committee
- Karen Umemoto, UCLA, activist-scholarship and juvenile justice reform
The participants of this symposium are developing an edited volume based on the public presentations and the closed-door discussions on Asian American movement building.
