How America Sees Us: National survey shows many Americans prejudiced against Chinese Americans (in National News) Oakland Cultural Center Changes Name — Again (in Bay Area News) International Showdown: Selling arms to Taiwan (in Business) Mistress of Self: Interview with author Chitra Divakaruni (in A&E) Emil Amok: Busting Stereotypes (in Opinion)

Democracy Summer 2001

A challenge to the Asian American community

In 1963, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that there is an important distinction between a “negative peace,” which is an absence of tension, and a “positive peace,” which is the presence of justice.

King’s words, and the actions of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), helped to galvanize hundreds of students and young adults of all backgrounds to go to Mississippi in what has been called the Freedom Summer of 1964. Young idealists confronted the institutions of segregation by registering African Americans to vote, setting up Freedom Schools, and organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the segregated Mississippi Democratic Party.

Fannie Lou Hamer, an African American Mississippi sharecropper who once remarked that she got involved in voter rights because she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” was beaten and jailed for trying to vote. She went on to co-found the MFDP, and later reflected, “The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember.”

Asian Americans were among those who answered the call for racial justice in 1964. They included Billy Kochiyama, son of well-known civil rights activists Yuri and Bill Kochiyama, and William Marutani, the Japanese American attorney from Philadelphia who went on to serve as a judge and long-time civil rights advocate.

Today, in the aftermath of an election where the systematic exclusion of people of color was shockingly apparent, and where the deep flaws of a system, where winners take all and big money rules, people of conscience should be clamoring for an overhaul of the nation’s campaigning and voting processes. Cracks in the system were most glaring in Florida, but similar flaws can be found in each of the 50 states of the union.

This summer, a new voter empowerment project called Democracy Summer has the potential to do as much for our nation’s precious democracy as Freedom Summer did in 1964. It is based on a Voters’ Bill of Rights, which has been endorsed by over 110 organizations, and which calls for these reforms (see www.ippn.org for details):

• Strict enforcement and extension of the Voting Rights Act.
• Abolition of the electoral college.
• Clean money elections.
• Instant run-off voting.
• Proportional representation.
• Voting rights for former prisoners.
• Making voting easier and more reliable.
• Easier access to the ballot, the media and debates for candidates.
• Independent and non-partisan election administration bodies.
• Statehood for the District of Columbia.

With this document as the starting point, over 20 national organizations are using the “educate and organize” model of 1964 at three events, described as follows.

Democracy Summer 2001 will start with a Democracy Institute from June 17 to 23 at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, near the scene of the Florida recount battles. Over 200 young people from around the country will learn about the Voters’ Bill of Rights, and receive training in lobbying, community organizing, media relations, coalition-building and building a diverse movement.

After the Democracy Institute gathering in mid-June, many of the Institute’s graduates will join in local electoral reform efforts in Florida and nationwide as interns or temporary summer organizers. As in 1964, their goal will be to educate and bring new voters into the fight for true democracy.

Finally, a Pro-Democracy Convention will be held in Philadelphia from June 28 to July 1, on the weekend just before the Fourth of July. Initiated by the Center for Constitutional Rights, this event will bring together and galvanize all of those outraged by the many large and small injustices of Election 2000. According to activist Ted Glick of the Independent Progressive Politics Network (IPPN), “It will be a critical part of the process of building a permanent movement for far-ranging reforms toward genuine democracy.”

Groups supporting Democracy Summer 2001 so far include the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Action Network, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Global Exchange, Institute for Policy Studies, IPPN, Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Center for Voting and Democracy, Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Fannie Lou Hamer Project, Black Youth Vote and the Alliance for Democracy. Unfortunately, there are no major Asian American groups that have come forward as of yet to support this worthwhile effort, but there still is time.

The uneasy “negative peace” that is so palpable in this country is being overshadowed by fears of war and recession. This negative peace can only become peace with justice when we as Asian Americans do our part to vindicate the notion of “one person, one vote.” One way to start is for each of us to encourage an Asian American youth to participate in Democracy Summer activities, make a donation to support these events, and attend the Pro-Democracy Convention in Philadelphia this summer.