Janet Yip’s February 20th Speech
1. My name is Janet Yip. I'm a sansei, 3rd generation Japanese American and the National Office Coordinator for Refuse & Resist!
2. My parents, grandparents, all my aunts and uncles along with more than 110,000 other Japanese Americans were rounded up, and escorted to the concentration camps by military men with guns. This is something they never spoke to us about.
60 years ago yesterday, February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing the mass round up and incarceration of Japanese Americans by the military. Within two and a half months, by early May the Japanese community had disappeared.
3. The first to be arrested were the Issei, the first generation Japanese in America. The second generation, like my parents were called Nisei. They were then teenagers or in their early 20's born in the US and thought that the attacks would stop with the round-up of the Issei. Most couldn't believe that an evacuation of the whole community might take place. Many thought that if they cooperated with the government this would prove their loyalty to America.
At the same time, Japanese people felt isolated and alone with all the pumped up war hysteria directed against them. The LA Times said "A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched so a Japanese American, born of Japanese parents .. grows up to be a Japanese and not an American .. Thus while it might cause injustice to a few to treat them all as potential enemies .. we are at war with their race."
There's a complicated history here, but in the main the Japanese American community alone was unable to fight this.
When those who are targeted refuse to go along with the program, this provides the strongest basis to expose the injustice and win allies. We salute, cherish and stand with the courageous Muslim, Arab and South Asian families who have stood up to expose the injustice of what's going on today. I also want to address everyone else here too my Asian, Black, Latino, and White brothers and sisters. If the resistance only comes from the Arab, Muslim and South Asian community, the government will prevail in these attacks. More racial profiling, more disappeared, torture, and worse.
The call for today's national day of solidarity quotes from Pastor Neimoeller which is on Refuse & Resist's 1987 founding statement. We see this quote as a key part of our mission. One, that we must stand with those who are the first to be attacked. And two, that at a certain point, if we delay, it becomes too late to fight back, the steam roller of repression gathers too much momentum.
4. All of us in Refuse & Resist! share the horror of what happened on September 11th. We have differing views about the causes as well as about what we need too do to change the situation. But we all agree that the shutting down of dissent, the rounding up of immigrants, the curtailment of civil liberties and the US bombing and invasion of other countries must be opposed. Many of the new measures like the Patriot Act and the climate built around it is nothing less than fascistic. The people like John Ashcroft and Ralph Reed who are the architects of these measures have been pushing this reactionary agenda for 20 years, We call them Christian Fascists.
5. Our overall goal is to open and protect the space for dissent, to inspire current resisters, and to cultivate future resistance. This is Refuse & Resist!'s pledge.
We don't just want to make sure our voices are heard. We see the need to work together with people from all strata and nationalities to build a movement of resistance against the whole program of this war-time police state. We need to find, encourage and support the school administrators who will not turn in names of quote/unquote foreign students or turn in lists of what subjects students are taking. The heath care workers who refuse to turn in names of patients who don't have documentation. The librarians who refuse to turn in lists of who borrowed what book. The reservists who refuse to serve in what is shaping up to be a unlimited war. And in our neighborhoods, work places, schools we need to work together and build a community where there are no snitches.
6. Something that has run through my mind lately is the spirit of Mario Savio's statement made in the 60's in the midst of the free speech movement: "There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop."
We say, together, we will Refuse & Resist!