Transcript for the 59-min w/feature in news hole version of Crossing East: New Waves, New Storms - Program Eight

PROGRAM EIGHT
New Waves, New Storms

BILLBOARD

ANNOUNCER: Major Funding for this series is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with support from PRI ? Public Radio International.

HOST: This is Crossing East? Our stories, our history, our America? from NPR.

ZIA: The killers of Vincent Chin really never spent a day in jail.

Lee: They charged him with 59 counts under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. There was never any charges formally of spying.

EDWARD CHANG: Sai-I-Gu in Korean means April 29th. About 2,380 Korean-American owned stores were looted or burned down during the riots.

Bhairavi Desai: We changed how drivers were being viewed. We changed the imbalance of power in this industry.

Samena Faheema: Japanese community was the first one that came to show support after 9/11 for the American Muslims and South Asians. They have been through the same thing.

HOST: I?m Margaret Cho? When we return??New Waves, New Storms? on Crossing East?

(NEWS BREAK)

SEGMENT A

MUSIC BUTTON

HOST: I?m Margaret Cho, ?. ?New Waves, New Storms??

The 1980?s and 1990?s ushered in a time of hope and change for Asian Americans. In 1981, Congress?under pressure from the Japanese American community seeking redress and reparations?held hearings across the country.

After hearing the 750 testimonies from witnesses, the Commission on Wartime Relocation concluded the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two was indeed ?a grave injustice.?

And in 1988, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, authorizing a formal apology and 20-thousand-dollars in reparations to every survivor of the camps. The next two decades would usher in a generation of Asian Americans who would continue to rise up against any new ?grave injustices.?

While some Asian Americans participated in civil rights struggles of the 1960s, others bought into the new stereotype of the ?model minority?. There was a strong belief if one played by the rules, anyone could succeed in America. But two events greatly challenged the model minority myth and galvanized Asian American communities ?the 1982 killing in Detroit of Vincent Chin and the 1999 accusations of spying against Wen Ho Lee.

Chapter One. ?New Movement for Civil Rights? by Reese Erlich.

NPR News/Eisenstein: Chin got into an argument with two men, 43- year-old Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz. Witnesses say Ebens made some cracks about foreign cars putting Americans out of work.

REESE ERLICH: In the documentary film ?Who Killed Vincent Chin,? two policeman describes what they saw that night.

COP: Mr. Nitz had to grab Mr. Vincent Chin in a bear hug while Mr. Ebens swung a bat repeatedly striking Mr. Chin--full contact, full swing. (sound of ambulance)

REESE ERLICH: Helen Zia, who helped found the justice committee for Vincent Chin says that while she considered the killing a hate crime, many in the Detroit Asian community initially did not.

Zia: One of the dancers at the bar heard very clearly. They said things like, nip, Chink. And then he said it?s because of you mother______. that we?re out of work. A lot of people who very much felt that they should lie low, don?t make waves, were not that comfortable even using the word racism.

Hing: The Asian American movement so to speak did start in the 1960s, and largely in the Bay Area. It came as part of or on the heels of ethnic studies and the black power movement.

REESE ERLICH: Bill Hing is a professor of Law and Asian Studies at the University of California, Davis.

HING: Even the term Asian American didn?t really come of age until the 1960s. When the Vincent Chin case came along that woke up a generation of new Asian Americans in the country who had not been politicized by the Asian American studies movement.

NPR News/NINA TOTENBERG Host intro: In Detroit a federal grand jury indicted two men convicted earlier this year of murdering Chinese American engineer Vincent Chin. FADES UNDER

Zia: And there was a federal civil rights trial that actually took place in Detroit. They decided that Ronald Ebens, the man who wielded the bat that crushed Vincent?s skull four times, was guilty of violating Vincent Chin?s civil rights. So Ronald Ebens was sentenced to 20 years. That case then was appealed. The defendant won on appeal the sentence was overturned and a whole new trial was ordered.

Then it was moved to Cincinatti, which is a whole different location. As few Asian Americans as there in Detroit, there were even fewer in Cincinnati. The foreperson of jury was a laid off factory worker with profile incredibly similar to the killer and so they acquitted Ronald Ebens. He was then freed.

The killers of Vincent Chin really never spent a day in jail. Even though there was a sad ending for Chin himself, there was an incredible legacy left behind. It really politicized an entire community to understand the whole notion of civil rights and civil participation.

REESE ERLICH: Rev. Norman Fong headed up the Vincent Chin justice committee in San Francisco.

Fong: There?s two Americas to me. I really feel there?s the side that is mythical America. Everyone can make it in America, the melting pot. Everyone is colorless and classless. Then there?s the real America, which is one of struggle. We have to fight to keep the democratic principles alive in America.

NPR News/Scott Simon: Federal grand jury has handed down a 59-count indictment against Wen Ho Lee, an American nuclear scientist suspected of espionage.

REESE ERLICH: While the Vincent Chin case galvanized students and working class Asians, the case of Dr. Wen Ho Lee woke up middle-class and professional Asian Americans. Dr. Lee was a respected physicist working at the Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico. The Taiwan-born Dr. Lee was repeatedly questioned about nuclear secrets given to mainland China.

Lee: He met with the FBI on 20 occasions without an attorney, each one lasting 4-5 hours. My dad thought he was helping the FBI. He didn?t know he was the target of the investigation

Alberta Lee, Dr. Lee?s daughter.

Lee: They charged him with downloading and mishandling classified information. They charged him with 59 counts under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. There was never any charges formally of spying.

My family was just in shock that this could happen in America. We really always believed that you come to the US, and you work hard, keep your head down and don?t rock the boat. We were never really awakened to discrimination in America until this case happened to my father. We pretty much kind of lived what?s known as the model minority type of existence where we didn?t care about politics and floated through life.

REESE ERLICH: Professor Bill Hing

Hing: Initially I think the Chinese American community and the Asian American community didn?t know how to react. Some thought maybe he was a spy. Others thought, no he couldn?t be.

REESE ERLICH: Helen Zia.

Zia: In the workgroup of 70 some other scientists where Wen Ho Lee worked. there were a handful of scientists, maybe a dozen or so, with the same ?profile? as Wen Ho Lee who had visited China on lab business. But none of them were taken seriously as suspects or investigated. Wen Ho Lee was the only person the government ever investigated. He was Chinese American.

REESE ERLICH: Dr. Lee?s daughter Alberta.

Lee: Having support from Chinese Americans was crucial in raising awareness for my father?s defense. But once the scientific groups, American Physical Society, the National Institute of Sciences, Committee for Concerned Scientists came on board to write letters to Janet Reno, that was when the tide began to change. It was not about race, but about scientific matters as well and our nation?s defense.

NPR NEWS/Bob Edwards: Former Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee has been released from jail nine months after he was detained for illegally copying data on classified missile technology. Prosecutors settled with Lee on a condition that he plead guilty to one of the 59 counts.

NPR News/Guy Raz: US District Judge James Parker, who presided over this case, had harsh words for government prosecutors. He called the case against Wen Ho Lee an embarrassment to the nation and asked the federal agencies who filed the suit to apologize to him.

Alberta Lee: I think in both Vincent Chin and my father?s case, Chinese Americans realized that they need to be much more vigilant, much more politically aware, ,politically involved. And they also needed to be cognizant of stereotyping that occurs somehow among the masses in America. Chinese Americans are perceived to be a certain way. I think In both situations, Chinese Americans organized ad hoc overnight in casual matters and in informal manners to rally to support the person that was involved.

Zia: The Vincent Chin and Wen Ho Lee case really do give us reason to feel that even in the face of injustice, you can actually fight back. It does take people coming together. It does take a social movement. And out of those social movements come greater preparedness for the future.

NPR NEWS/Guy Raz: Speaking publicly for the first time since his incarceration, Lee made it clear he was pleased to be out of jail.
Dr. Wen Ho Lee: I'm very happy to go home with my wife and my children today. And I want to say `thank you' to all the people who support me. I really appreciate very, very much. And for next few day, I'm going to go fishing.
[Ambience of laughter and applause]

Lee: Most of the time, he?s OK. He?s dealt with this in his own way. He?s actually printed a mathmatics textbook on linear algebra as well as a couple of publications in international journals. But I think he remains unsettled with his position in the United States. It?s still a continuing process to heal from the pain.

MUSIC FADES UP AND OUT

HOST: ?New Movement for Civil Rights? by Reese Erlich. Hear more stories on website?CrossingEast dot O-R-G. I?m Margaret Cho?

HOST: Next a watershed moment in Korean American history. ?

EDWARD CHANG: Sai-I-Gu in Korean means April 29th. In Korea, important historical dates are remembered by the day they occurred, just like 9-11. In the Korean community, Sai-I-Gu, remembers what happened on April 29th, 1992 in Los Angeles.

START OF NPR CUT
Wendy Kaufman piece from Morning Edition 4/30/1992

SOUND: POLICE CAR

BOB EDWARDS: Los Angeles is reacting with violence to the verdict in the Rodney King trial. Riots, looting, vandalism and arson?

END OF NPR CUT

START OF NPR CUT
Ina Jaffe piece from Morning Edition 5/1/1992

WOMAN : It?s like living here is a war zone.

END OF NPR CUT

START OF NPR CUT
Wendy Kaufman piece from Morning Edition 4/30/05

BOB EDWARDS: Businesses were looted. Motorists were pulled from their cars and beaten?

END OF NPR CUT

ANGELA OH: I guess the first few nights it was a lot of anger about the verdict so you saw burning, looting, vandalism.

SONNY KANG: And people who were not of African descent were being pulled out of their cars and nearly being beaten to death, especially if you were Korean or if you were white. A lot of people were afraid so they started closing down their stores. People started hearing over the radio Korean store owners were being attacked.

DON MYONG: Look at the TV all looter and stealing and hitting and daddy, don?t go. We have insurance, don?t go, don?t go and she start crying. I couldn?t get out, I stay home and I see TV, and start burning the other liquor store, all the liquor store, shopping center.

START NPR CUT
Ina Jaffe piece from Morning Edition 4/30/1992

MAN ON STREET: Serve and protect who? We don?t feel that the blacks and minorities are being served?

END OF NPR CUT

EDWARD CHANG: Violence continued throughout the night into three additional days and the height of racial violence took place for another three days. The official ending was about six days after.

HOST: An Uprising in Los Angeles?or a racial riot?

in a moment?This is Crossing East?

ANNOUNCER: In this segment we featured the music of Jon Jang. Support for Crossing East comes from this station and Public Radio International stations and is made possible in part by the PRI Series Fund, whose contributors include the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

MUSIC BREAK

SEGMENT B

HOST: I?m Margaret Cho and this Crossing East?. New Waves, New Storms?

Perhaps one of the worst riots in U.S. history began in Los Angeles on April 29th 1992. Three days and four nights of demonstrations, civil disobedience, rioting, looting and arson ended with 55 people dead, nearly 23-hundred injured, and another 10-thousand arrested. More than 11-hundred buildings were damaged or destroyed in sections of South Central Los Angeles and nearby Koreatown. More than 13-thousand National Guard and federal officers were called in to patrol a city that looked like a bombed-out war zone. Though much has been reported about the riots, little has been said about its devastating impact on the Korean American community. Korean convenience stores that sold liquor were especially targeted during and after the riots. Even less has been said of how Korean Americans rose to the challenge of the tragedy, leading to perhaps the largest protest organized by the Asian American community.

Chapter Two. ?Sai-I-Gu?

EDWARD CHANG: Sai-I-Gu in Korean means April 29th

SOUND: SIREN

EDWARD CHANG: About 2,380 Korean-American owned stores were looted or burned down during the riots.

START NPR CUT
Elaine Korry piece from All Things Considered 4/30/1992

ELAINE KORRY: A neighborhood shopping is burned to a heap of smoldering ash. Neighbors huddle in small groups, shaking their heads in disbelief.

END NPR CUT

ANGELA OH: For people from immigrant families who were not so well off, there was just confusion about why is this happening. America?s not supposed to be this type of a country.

DON MYONG: And then that time they called me, ?Hey Don, your store burning.? So my wife cry, my daughter and me cry and I didn?t expect the burning.

START NPR CUT
John McChesney piece from Morning Edition 5/1/1992

BOB EDWARDS: As the violence moved out of South Central Los Angeles and spread, a sniper on top of a building shot at people in the street?

END NPR CUT

SONNY KANG: They announced over the radio that they needed able-bodied young Koreans to come and protect Koreatown if they were willing so we came out, we brought our guns, we brought our willingness to protect our community. At the time, the police were nowhere to be seen.

START NPR CUT
John McChesney piece from Morning Edition 5/1/1992

BOB EDWARDS: 2000 members of the National Guard are on the streets?.

END NPR CUT

AQUEELA SHERRILL: There is a lot of poverty that exists in urban communities in this country. You know the riots broke out in several major cities across the country because of the Rodney King verdict. Many people felt that the system had taken advantage of them, so stores, supermarkets, shops, people saw it as a free-for-all. Here?s a chance to go in and be able to get some goods and things that we feel we need. A lot of people lost their businesses, not just Korean-Americans but also African-Americans, Latino-Americans, many people lost their business as a part of the riots. It wasn?t directed towards any specific person.

EDWARD CHANG: The Korean immigrant merchants were put in, in the context by American society to play the role of the middle man, that they served as a buffer between the dominant white group and subordinate Black and Latino community. So by functioning as a middleman merchant, they?re the one who gets all the day-to-day interaction with underclass customers, in this case African Americans, and therefore they become a target of resentment, hatred, anger.

START NPR CUT
Ina Jaffe piece from Morning Edition 5/1/1992

MAN: They?re going crazy, Everyone?s going crazy right now, the black gangs, the white gangs, the Korean gangs. END NPR CUT

AQUEELA SHERRILL: About 2/3 of South Central Los Angeles has been incarcerated or had some type of incarceration. The kids and the adults in these communities suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and hyper-vigilance. This is a war zone. It literally is. If South-Central Los Angeles were not in the United States, there would be humanitarian aid in here helping people to deal with the after-effects of war, there would be peace envoys here.

ANGELA OH: This was not a product of black-Korean tensions. It really was not the reason why LA imploded. We had really huge problems with our confidence in the police department. We had huge economic problems?

AQUEELA SHERRILL: And sometimes when people see oh, this individual has a liquor store, they think these people are making millions of dollars, they don?t understand the business of running a market. They don?t understand that you?re making a two cents markup on canned foods and five cents on a bag of potato chips. They just think people are making millions of dollars because they might drive a nice car and different things like that.

EDWARD CHANG: Koreans came here believing that America is a land of opportunities, land of immigrants, land of freedom. Therefore anyone can make it if you work hard. On the other hand, African Americans who had to endure historical repression, discrimination and racism. They are the generation of poverty, unemployment, and they have always witnessed outsiders, always come in and profit at their own expense. So those clash of ideology really didn?t help either because they began to blame each other.

START NPR CUT
Wendy Kaufman piece from Morning Edition 4/30/1992

BOB EDWARDS: King?s beating on March 3rd, 1991, was videotaped and triggered a year of local and national outrage.

END NPR CUT

ANGELA OH: I think the media had a huge role actually that it played in shaping the animosity or hatred toward immigrants, especially from Korea.

SONNY KANG: There was a shooting incident in South Central LA. The news broadcast an isolated incident when a Korean storeowner shot a young teenage black girl, Latasha Harlans, and she died. The storeowner was only sentenced to community service and the black community was outraged, and so was I.

EDWARD CHANG: And that shooting incident was captured by the security camera that were mounted in the store. Everybody knows about the Rodney King beating videotapes. So those two videotapes were aired constantly everyday until April 29th, 1992. So the media not only simply showed those tapes whenever there were Korean/African-American conflict, or a boycott of Korean stores, they would show either tapes. They were repeatedly forced to watch those two videotapes. Which sends a message ? if you are an African-American person, you could face a brutal beating by LAPD officers, and if you?re an African-American customer, you could face a possible murder by Korean Americans.

SOUND: DRUMS, CROWD SOUNDS

ANGELA OH: You saw in Koreatown probably 90 to 100,000 people gathering in the International Park area. It went on for blocks and blocks and people peacefully marching together from all parts of the city, literally cleaning up the streets as they went.

EDWARD CHANG: Many of the participants were Korean Americans but there were others: Latinos, African Americans, white Americans. It was multi-ethnic. And they all came together in peace and justice instead of blaming. They wanted to come together. I think that?s a very important historical lesson.

SOUND: DRUM OUT

START NPR CUT
Ina Jaffe piece from Morning Edition 5/1/1992

INA JAFFE: The new day brought no peace. Wherever you looked there were new pillars of black smoke.

END NPR CUT

DON MYONG: About a week later and still smoking so let them burning and sit there and stay home and depress. Then I say what is this letter? And I show it to my daughter, honey, what is it? Daddy, you cannot open store.

EDWARD CHANG: During LA riots about 150 to 200 Korean American owned liquor stores in South Los Angeles was totally burned down. And many of them wanted to rebuild their stores, and yet, LA city council passed ordinance requiring storeowners to go through public hearing processes.

DON MYONG: City government give so much hard time to reopening. To give zoning problem and planning problem we had to go through to reopen store.

EDWARD CHANG: Many residents, African American residents, protested rebuilding of Korean American liquor stores, arguing that there were too many liquor stores already. During the hearing process, residents argued that they need more security. Therefore if you wanted to rebuild the stores, the Korean storeowners were required to hire security guards or limit sales of liquors between sunup and sundown, which almost made it impossible for them to make a decent living.

DON MYONG: And city government should have helped us. They didn?t protect the good citizen. We licensable and tax person, good citizen. They didn?t protect us to burning to all the store. And they started giving me problem to reopen back to store.

ANGELA OH: It really was an unfair process. There was such animus toward Korean storeowners who had type 20 or 21 licenses, which are beer and wine or hard liquor licenses.

DON MYONG: Three years stay home, I use up all the funding money, so that?s why I lost my house and everything.

ANGELA OH: There were people who committed suicide. There were people whose families were literally destroyed because of the fact that these are immigrants ? they don?t speak the language, they don?t have support networks here other than maybe church communities. So families were pretty devastated beyond just the loss of the business.

START NPR CUT.
Elaine Korry piece from All Things Considered 4/30/1992

ELAINE KORRY: The garage, the walkways, the offices, were dark and deserted. The air was still, and bitter with smoke

END NPR CUT

EDWARD CHANG: Right after the riots there were a lot of corporations and political leaders, visiting South LA, Koreatown, promising this, promising that. A year after that what happened? It?s all forgotten. Nobody is paying attention. Nobody is saying anything about it. All of the promises came and gone and that?s the reason why all the knowledgeable people are saying it?s going to happen again because we haven?t done anything to improve the conditions that erupted the racial violence.

AQUEELA SHERRILL: I think that the LA Riot was a precursor to something else that hasn?t happened within the culture. We are being totally emotionally desensitized to violence against one another ? I think we?re being pitted against one another on a large scale.

SOUND: MUSIC BEGINS UNDERNEATH

ANGELA OH: The fact of the gap between the wealthy and the poor growing, except now we?re talking on a global scale. ? And so if people are feeling that they want to work and they can?t because there?s just nothing. And if our housing crisis continues?If we continue on where our solution to dealing with problems in our community is to jail young people for long periods of time without any thinking that these are young people who are coming back to our communities, we?re just asking for another 1992.

SOUND: ARIRANG SONG

HOST: ?Sai-I-Gu? by Dmae Roberts and Miae Kim.

ANNOUNCER: Featured voices in Sai I Gu were Edward Chang, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California-Riverside, Attorney Angela Oh, Dong Myong, Owner of Trojan Market, Aqueela Sherril, Executive Director of Community Self Determination Inc. and Sonny Kang.
Chindo Arrirang was performed by Chang Hye-Jin and Maria K. Seo and provided by Jack Straw Productions in Seattle, Washington through their Traditional Artists Support program.

MUSIC FADES OUT

HOST: In April 1998, New York City laid out 17 new rules that increased fines for taxi drivers and made it easier for them to lose their licenses. A majority of the drivers came from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, countries that had taken up arms against each other just decades before. But the city?s taxi drivers were angry enough to do what many said couldn?t be done: they organized. For one day, they walked off the job and went on strike and proved they were a force to be reckoned with.

Chapter Three. ?Taxi Turmoil? by Deepa Ranganathan. (Rung-guh-NAH-thin.)

Rizwan Raja, taxi driver [IN CAB]: Here comes a passenger.

Passenger #1 [IN CAB]: Hi, could you take me please to 46th and first?

Rizwan Raja [IN CAB]: 46th and first? All right.

Deepa Ranganathan: Rizwan Raja [RIZ-wan RAH-jah] was an accountant?s apprentice in Pakistan. He started driving a cab to be his own boss.

Rizwan Raja: I think that?s the really only thing that keeps the cab drivers in this business.

Biju Mathew: Taxi driving becomes an attractive proposition for one single reason.

Deepa Ranganathan: Biju Mathew is a volunteer organizer for the New York Taxi Workers? Alliance.

Biju Mathew: Unlike a bodega, right, or unlike a restaurant where you?ll get minimum wage or below, when it comes to taxi driving, the difference is that you might end up with 1500 or 2000 dollars in a month, but there is always a chance that you can make more.

[HONKING HORN]

Deepa Ranganathan: In 1998 New York City taxi drivers were targeted by Mayor Rudolph Guiliani?s quality of life initiative. Seventeen new rules were handed down by the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Insurance costs for cabs and drivers skyrocketed. Fines tripled for smoking in the cab or treating passengers rudely. And if a driver racked up two tickets in 18 months ? say for following another car too closely and then forgetting to give a passenger a receipt ? his license and his livelihood could be suspended.

Biju Mathew: For a taxi driver, getting tickets on the street is the equivalent for the factory worker getting grease on his hands. It?s working conditions.

DEEPA RANGANATHAN: Biju Mathew.

BIJU MATHEW: So in a situation like this you?re hanging a sword over a driver?s neck and saying you make two mistakes and you?re dead.

Rizwan Raja: and treating passengers rudely ? my god!

DEEPA RANGANATHAN: Rizwan Raja.

RIZWAN RAJA: I mean, 99.99 percent we are on the receiving end of the rude conversations, rather than treating people rudely. So to me it looks like preparing the general public for a huge crackdown on immigrant labor.

Bhairavi Desai: Just member after member after member walked up to us and said you know, we have to strike.

DEEPA RANGANATHAN: Bhairavi Desai [BAY-rah-vee Dess-AYE) was 23 years old when she started organizing taxi drivers a decade ago. Now she?s executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

DESAI: Like, enough is enough. You know, we?re not reckless. You know, we have to send a message that we?re not going to take it.

Bhairavi Desai: We had general members taking the flyer, spending money on their own to copy it. And then they would call back to the office and report in. You know, I just copied 200 flyers. I?m standing at the corner of Houston and Broadway. And so we just flooded the entire industry with the message that on May 13, 1998 we?re going out on strike.

[ROARING BUS]

Deepa Ranganathan: But taxi drivers were hard to organize. They were scattered all over the city and they competed for customers. Though many had immigrated from South Asia, the drivers didn?t have a common language or culture.

Bhairavi Desai: Drivers would always talk about the fact that you have people from so many different countries and that makes it more difficult to be organized, and certainly there were tensions between the Indian and Pakistani drivers.

Deepa Ranganathan: In the early days of May 1998, India carried out five nuclear tests. Pakistan responded with six tests later that month. It was hard for drivers to ignore the political struggles in their home countries. But in their cabs these differences were invisible to most taxi customers.

Rizwan Raja: Most of the riding public are middle class and upper middle class people, and you know who are they in this city. So, so we are being treated in a way which reminds us every single moment of it, where I?m come from and which is my identity. Whether you are a Puerto Rican or a Pakistani, whether you are a Uruguayan or an Indian, you all look the same, all are brown. That helped us in organizing that strike.

[CAB DOOR SLAMS. HONKING]

SOUND: TRAFFIC FADES OUT

Javaid Tariq: Six o? clock morning, Queensboro Bridge is always full with yellow cabs coming to the Manhattan for work,

Deepa Ranganathan: Javaid Tariq is a Pakistani cab driver.

Javaid Tariq: But at that day I did not see a single cab crossing the bridge.

Bhairavi Desai: There were just no taxis anywhere. There were just like lines and lines of people waiting around, waiting for a cab. And we just walked up and down the street saying no not today, you?re better off going into the subway, you know, better take that bus, you know.

Deepa Ranganathan: New York City police estimated 90 percent of drivers were on strike that day. The strike?s organizers said 98 percent, about 23,000 drivers.

The same month, a different taxi group ? the United Yellow Cab Drivers Association ? planned a motorcade protest. But the city yanked its permission and Mayor Giuliani threatened to arrest the drivers. That?s when a deputy police commissioner allegedly told the press that the drivers were ?taxi terrorists.?

Rizwan Raja: Which was like a slap on the face of working class. And remember there was no 9-11 on the horizon, we are talking about 1998.

Javaid Tariq: We felt very bad about this, because we were hard working people and we were fighting for our economic situation, and we live in this country, we love this country.

Biju Mathew: We couldn?t have had a better organizer than Mayor Rudy Giuliani. I mean, who was a bully, who was one, enacting the most unfavorable policies for drivers, and two, who was willing to talk about drivers in the most disparaging terms, so any self respecting person would respond to that in a way of wanting to defend themselves.

Deepa Ranganathan: A week later the drivers finally received permission for their motorcade, but they had to cross the bridge too early in the morning to attract much notice.

Hundreds of drivers packed a public hearing in Manhattan and spoke to the Taxi and Limousine Commission for seven hours that day. But it was clear they weren?t listening to drivers.

Deepa Ranganathan: Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Diane McGrath-McKechnie.

McGrath-McKechnie: This reform package was long overdue. It was a direct result of the mayor?s quality of life initiative, and it was a direct result of consumer response. The day of that bad, unsafe, reckless driver is over.

Deepa Ranganathan: The commissioners passed all but two of the 17 rules. Although the City Council stepped in and weakened the toughest of the rules, fines went up, and it became a little easier for a driver to lose his license. Technically, the strike wasn?t successful. But some organizers and drivers still claim victory.

Bhairavi Desai: We changed how drivers were being viewed. We changed the imbalance of power in this industry. It was such a beautiful event to see a group of working people who had such amazing courage.

Rizwan Raja: This also actually opened the doors for other unions to think critically that yeah, we can fight back.

HOST: ?Taxi Turmoil? by Deepa Ranganathan. (Rung-guh-NAH-thin.) You can find out more about our stories on CrossingEast dot O-R-G.

In a moment a high tech return to coolie labor? This is Crossing East.

ANNOUNCER: Archival material was provided by WNYC and NPR. Our featured music is from Aishwarya and Vinod Venkataraman of Devine Strings. This is PRI ? Public Radio International.

MUSIC BREAK

SEGMENT C

HOST: I?m Margaret Cho? we?re talking about New Waves, New Storms?on Crossing East.

In today?s global economy, job security is fast becoming a dream of the past. The 1990?s brought a new type of worker. In row after row of cubicles across America, immigrant labor powers the high tech industry. Beginning in 1990, the H-1B visa program brought thousands of temporary workers from south Asia to fill vacant jobs in technology and education. Since 9-11, policy debates on immigration have intensified.

Problems for workers range from discrimination on the job to being fired at a moment's notice. Without a job, there's no visa, and a worker must leave the country almost immediately.

Chapter Four. "H1B Blues" by Ginger Miles.

[TABLA PLAYS]

SHARMALA RUDRAPA: The H1B Visa process is completely voluntary. No one is holding a gun to these people?s heads saying apply for these jobs. But just because it?s voluntary doesn?t mean it cannot be abusive.

SHAVALI SHAH: These are folks that are highly educated with a high level of English speaking capacity and they?re being treated no better than undocumented immigrants

[TABLA Crossfade BOMBAY TRAFFIC]

RAJIV: I?m Rajiv. I was on the H1b visa. I came back to India after staying in the United States for 14 years. I personally went through some issues during 9-11. I was racially profiled while I was there on the H1 visa and my company just threw their hands up and they had nothing to do with it. This resulted in me and my wife and my daughter returned back to India. All charges against me were dropped and then we came back here and didn?t go back to the United States.
After 9-11 there was abuse from American colleagues, technology workers?H1b workers are lowering wages. So H1b workers are kind of subdued in their attempts towards making their opinions known out in the public for fear of getting another backlash coming in from local citizens.

[COMPUTER SOUNDS]

RAJIV: Presently in India I run an organization by the name of www.nostops.org and it?s an open source database of Visa sponsors.

WOMAN READING WEBSITE: To post your resume for free on this H1B database for potential sponsors and employees to contact you directly, please click here.

SHAVALI SHAH: Obviously this is a very tech-savvy group. They have tons of chat groups on the Internet. Job networking websites where you can pose your questions.

MAN READING WEBSITE: If you need further clarification from a registered immigration attorney, please click here.

SHAVALI SHAH: My name is Shavali Shah. I?ve been an advocate for immigrants? rights for the past ten years. And for the last year and a half I?ve been conducting the H Visa survey, which is a survey of H1b VISA holders and H4 VISA holders.

SHARMALA RUDRAPA: I'm Sharmala Rudrapa. Presently I am on an H1b and I?m an Assistant Professor in Sociology and in Asian American studies.

WOMAN READING WEBSITE: Can I transfer my H1B to another company?

MAN READING WEBSITE: To transfer your H1B you need valid employment in the US. Also you have to prove that you have recent pay stubs, at least 60 days old.

SHARMALA RUDRAPA: There?s the promise of the green card coming down the roa?.they might be actually much more exploitable than are citizen workers. And this is where you start seeing the abuse of the H1b system.

SHAVALI SHAH: The consultant companies, called body shoppers, will sponsor an employee?s visa, and instead of the employee working for that particular employer, the employer will get contracts from larger companies to hire out a employee for a fixed term.

SHARMALA RUDRAPA: Now, say I own a company that basically runs as a body shop. So what I would then do is I would send my workforce to go do that job for maybe two months, maybe three months. Finish that project and bring my workers back. For that I would get a lump sum of money that is contracted to me, but the kinds of pay that I give to the workers, I would pay them pitiful amounts of money.

[COMPUTER SOUNDS]

SHAVALI SHAH: For the Indian employee whose first job experience in the US, is with one of these consulting companies, they?re not going to know any better. In a lot of cases, this is not all of them, but for the ones that do this, they have the employee sign an agreement in the beginning that they will allow the employer to take care of all of their taxes for them. When the tax return comes, they end up cashing the tax return themselves, instead of giving it back to the employee to whom it rightfully belongs.

WOMAN READING WEBSITE: If you have any issues regarding payment from your employer, you should contact your local Department of Labor.

SHAVALI SHAH: There was one fellow that I had spoken with who raised a very mild, minor question about why his allowance was a couple thousand less than it had been in previous months. A few days later he was told that his company would no longer pay for the medical benefits for his pregnant wife and his two other children. And that he had to pay for them himself. Two weeks after that he was told that he had to go back to India.

[KEYBOARDING SOUNDS]

WOMAN READING WEBSITE: How long can I stay here after being laid off?

MAN READING WEBSITE: Leave the country as soon as possible to avoid any potential legal issues.

SHAVALI SHAH: And this is another problem with the H1b law is that the minute your connection to the employer is no longer there, you don?t get a grace period of a few months to wrap up your affairs and go home. The minute you are either fired or you quit, from your job that is sponsoring your H1b, you need to wrap up your affairs and go home.

[PRINTER SOUNDS]

SHAVALI SHAH: My goals in doing the survey, this research and the advocacy that I?m doing are to change laws that create an exploitive situation for H1b workers who are working for consulting companies, as well as for the H4 dependent spouses.

SOUND: TRAFFIC OUT. MUSIC FADES IN

RAJIV: I came to the US when I was 21. I would like to come back but not in the current H1b visa program. I would definitely like to arrive back wherein I could feel respected and have some dignity of labor. US respects individuality, there?s a freedom of choice and I think I miss that and that?s the only thing I can give my daughter, something to look forward to for her future. And I would rather go back to a place where I feel it?s my home, that's where my heart belongs.

SOUND: MUSIC OUT

HOST: "H1B Blues" by Ginger Miles.

MUSIC AND SOUND SEGUE Ambience: Candle light walk

Samena Faheema: Japanese community was the first one that came to show support after 9/11 for the American Muslims and South Asians. They have been through the same thing.

Host: Samena Faheema Sundas holds a lit candle as she and hundreds of others walk from San Jose?s Japantown to the South Bay Islamic Association in California. This candlelight walk for peace on the 2004 anniversary of September 11th is one of many events where Japanese and Muslim Americans are joining together, because the attack on the Twin Towers produced another wave of racial violence.

Our final chapter for New Waves, New Storms? ?Racial Profiling Then and Now? by Robynn Takayama.

9/11 NEWS
NPR TAPE: From NPR News in Washington, I?m Jean Cochran: Two planes crashed into the Twin Towers of the WTC in New York this morning about 20-30 minutes apart. [fade out]

Deepa Ranganathan: As American symbols of power collapsed into rubble, taking thousands of lives, a fear of homeland Insecurity spread across the country. Some turned against people they associated with terrorists simply because of the color of their skin.

NPR3: The backlash has hit every region of the country. In Chicago, a pro-American demonstration got out of hand when several hundred people converged on an Islamic Center and began chanting anti-Muslim slogans. In Seattle a man was caught?.. [fade out]

Deepa Iyer: Regardless of whether you?ve been born in the country, you don?t speak with an accent, you feel as American as anyone else around you?they see you as belonging to a larger group of people ?whom they don?t feel belong in the country.

Robynn Takayama: Deepa Iyer, with South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow, speaks of the targeting of Muslims and South Asians after the 9/11 attacks. But this is not the first time a community has been singled out during a national crisis.

PEARL HARBOR TAPE: On December 7, 1941, Japan, like its infamous Axis partners, struck first?. [fade down]

Robynn Takayama: Japan?s attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. The bombing also launched an internal attack on Americans of Japanese descent, especially on the west coast.

Yuri Kochiyama: Three tall white men came knocking on our door. ?and they all showed a little card and it said ?Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Robynn Takayama: Yuri Kochiyama returned home to her father in San Pedro, California. He was recovering from surgery just the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Yuri Kochiyama: And then they asked if a Seichi Nakahara lived there. And I said, ?Oh, yes. That?s my father.? And they said, ?where is he?? I said he?s sick. He?s in the back sleeping.? They just went right in the house. Woke him up and told him, ?Put on your slippers and bathrobe.? And everything happened so fast. I didn?t have a chance to even ask where are you taking him.

Robynn Takayama: This story foreshadows what happened to many families right after September 11th. Hundreds of men from South Asian or Middle Eastern countries were swept up and detained.

Interpreter: My name is Bobby Khan and I?m interpreting for Malik Ali.

Malik: Punjabi starts during interpreter introduction

Malik Ali: I was hearing from the people who was regularly going to the mosque that FBI and INS is cracking down where predominately Pakistani and Muslim community is living.

Malik: Punjabi posts and ends

Robynn Takayama: Deepa Iyer

Deepa Iyer: Their men, their fathers, their brothers, were taken away to detention centers, were interrogated, were investigated and were denied access to their own family members, were denied access to counsel, were part of the disappeared in America.

SOUND: FLUTE FADES UP

Robynn Takayama: In the first 48 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, more than 700 Japanese Americans were rounded up. Yuri Kochiyama?s family discovered their father, still recovering from surgery, was taken to a federal prison on Terminal Island. He was interrogated for hours at a time as a prisoner of war. Six weeks later, her father returned home in an ambulance and passed away the next day.

The family had little time to grieve because on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. All Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were ordered to in-land internment camps.

Robynn Takayama: Yuri Kochiyama

Yuri Kochiyama: It was only what you could carry. We just could not carry anything that could be used as a weapon. I mean, no knifes. I don?t think they let us bring chopsticks. No radio.

Robynn Takayama: More than a hundred and ten thousand Japanese Americans were moved to ten internment camps throughout the United States. Once released at the end of the war, the Isseis, Japanese immigrants, had to rebuild their lives from scratch.

Yuri Kochiyama: Isseis lost their homes. They lost their work, their income, everything, I mean self determination, civil rights?They lost really everything.

SOUND: MUSIC FADES OUT

SOUND: CROWD FADES IN

John Oda: When the Japanese were interned, the only group that stood up in protest to their internment were the Quakers?

Robynn Takayama: John Oda is the reverend at Pine United Methodist Church, an historically Japanese American church in San Francisco.

John Oda: ?it?s sad that no one else stood in opposition to this illegal internment. And so that?s one of the reasons we were very quick and very strong to stand up and be here.

Robynn Takayama: Right after 911, vandals destroyed large glass doors to the Islamic Center of San Francisco. Pine United raised funds to help replace these doors and became a sister church to the mosque.

SOUND: AMBIENCE FADES UP

Robynn Takayama: Many Japanese Americans quickly spoke out against a repeat of mass round ups and incarceration after 9/11, but the government DID implement another form of racial profiling. The Department of Justice instituted the Special Registration Program in September 2002. Malik Ali first heard about it at his mosque.

SOUND: AMBIENCE FADES OUT

Malik: [Punjabi starts low]
Malik Ali: I was very much afraid when after the prayer, I heard that some INS official is speaking M5 They just said that you should come for registration and we will be giving you legal status.
Malik: [Punjabi comes up and out]

Robynn Takayama: But Special Registration was not amnesty. The program required men sixteen years and older from twenty-five designated countries to present themselves to their local INS office for fingerprinting and interrogation.
Deepa Iyer

Deepa Iyer: I remember ?community members saying that, ?I want to go but I?m really afraid about what might happen to me And I?m not sure whether I should go or whether I should stay under the radar screen.?

Malik: [Punjabi starts out and fades down]
Malik Ali: When I entered into the Federal Plaza M9 it was very crowded and I was not explained what to do.
Malik: [Punjabi posts and fades back down]

After about ten hours some agent took me to the 10th floor for the investigation and when I was taken there, someone asked me to sit on a hard bench and someone was threatening very loudly, ?You should know who you are. And you better cooperate with us.

I was told that you will not be returned your passport. It will be a judge, immigration judge who will make a decision about you and he?ll put you in a prison.
Malik: [Punjabi posts and fades back down]

Robynn Takayama: Deepa Iyer

Deepa Iyer: Definitely as more and more stories came out about immigrants under this program going in and then being detained and being deported, this definitely created another wave of fear.

Malik: [Punjabi starts hot and fades down]
Malik Ali: I had no choice left except to pray that God?show them that we are innocent people and we should not be treated like that. We should not be intimidated. We should not be put in the prisons. We should not be deported.
Malik: [Punjabi posts and ends]

Robynn Takayama: The Special Registration program wrapped up in April 2003. Nearly 83,000 men voluntarily complied. 13,000 men, including Malik Ali, received deportation orders, primarily for minor visa violations. No one was charged with terrorist activity.

SOUND: AMBIENCE UP (keep under the whole section)

Nosei: Our next speaker is going to be Yuri Kochiyama? [fade down]

Yuri Kochiyama: The reason I felt it was important to speak out right away is because US has been doing the same thing over and over. They had one law after another. You know where Japanese couldn?t own land. Asians could not become citizens.

Deepa Iyer: And throughout our country?s history, many groups of people ?have been framed as the ?other,??because of their skin color, or their last name, or their country of origin without looking into their individual culpability.

Ambience: [candle light ambience in low, taiko slowly fades up]

Robynn Takayama: Amid this backlash from the government and individuals, committed alliances have formed across racial lines and between religious communities. Sameena Faheem walked among a crowd of hundreds at a 2004 9/11 candle light vigil.

Samena Faheem: So I think we just need to stand together, and it is the kind of thing that we need to make the most beautiful diverse human wall of support and strength for one another.

Samena Faheem: We are together. We are going to be one body, trying to protect everyone.

SOUND: TAIKO AND AMBIENCE FADES OUT

SOUND: MUSIC FADES UNDER

HOST: ?Racial Profiling Then and Now? by Robynn Takayama.

And so our story, our history as Asians ?Crossing East? to America continues?

The lessons of the past
Of the land of promise and opportunity
Of Gold Mountain
Of refuge and safe haven
Of finding a community and a voice as citizens

These lessons, these dreams continue
As long as we remember, we tell and we write
Our stories, our history in our America.

I?m Margaret Cho?and this Crossing East?

ANNOUNCER:

Crossing East is produced with funding by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and individual donors of MediaRites Productions.

Our featured music is by Divine Strings.

Our theme music is by Shasta Taiko from their CD Spirit Drum.

Our lead scholar is Judy Yung Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Managing Editor is Catherine Stifter, The Associate Producer is Sara Caswell Kolbet. The Crossing East Engineer is Clark Salisbury with technical assistance by Michael Johnson. Marketing and outreach by Ping Khaw.

The Executive Producer is Dmae Roberts.

To find out more about Crossing East or for more information about Asian American history?go to CrossingEast.org.

Support for Crossing East comes from this station and Public Radio International stations.

MUSIC ENDS

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