Town Hall Meetings Mark 25 Years Since Vincent Chin’s Murder
June 29, 2007
Marking the 25th anniversary of Vincent Chin’s murder this month, a series of town halls on hate crimes are taking place in 14 cities during June and July. The events are organized by Asian Pacific Americans for Progress, in partnership with leading civil rights, advocacy and media groups.
“The Vincent Chin case represents the start of a pan-Asian movement, and we’re excited to bring together so many of the key players back then and today,” said Curtis Chin, a board member of APAs for Progress.
The events honor the memory of Vincent Chin, a 27-year-old draftsman who died on June 23, 1982. He was bludgeoned with a baseball bat four days earlier by two Detroit autoworkers, who blamed the Chinese American for competition from Japanese automakers.
The case was ripe with American icons, stereotypes and tragedy. Chin was about to be married that coming weekend.
After pleading guilty to reduced charges of manslaughter, Ron Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz were sentenced by a judge to three years probation and a fine of $3,000 each. No witnesses were called to testify, and the prosecuting attorney was not present at sentencing.
Shock and anger at the light sentences reverberated around the country. Asian Americans rallied with unprecedented force and numbers. After extensive demonstrations and advocacy by a grassroots pan-Asian group called American Citizens for Justice, a federal grand jury indicted Ebens and Nitz for violating Chin’s civil rights and for conspiracy to deny him public accommodation. In the trial that followed in Cincinnati, Nitz was cleared and Ebens’ conviction on the civil rights charge was later overturned on a legal technicality.
After five years of intensive organizing, losing the legal effort in its first national campaign of this magnitude did not devastate the Asian American community; instead, “[the community] had been transformed,” said journalist Helen Zia, co-founder of American Citizens for Justice and author of Asian American Dreams.
“Asian Americans are better organized now because of the Chin case,” said civil rights attorney Frank H. Wu, a former AsianWeek columnist and author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. “We have more of a pan-Asian American identity, better national networks, and recognition that APAs are not just on the coasts. We are also more aggressive in responding to incidents and are being taken seriously along with African Americans, Latinos and others on civil rights issues.”
Since the Chin case, dozens of high-profile hate crimes against Asian Americans have been successfully prosecuted and perpetrators duly sentenced. For example, in Los Angeles in 1999, Joseph Santos Ileto, a Filipino American postal worker, was shot to death while on his postal route by a self-proclaimed white supremacist. Buford Furrow, who also pled guilty to shooting five people at a Jewish community center on the same day, was sentenced to life in prison.
Ileto’s family and supporters launched a Hate Crimes Prevention Fellowship Fund in his name. Throughout cities and states across the nation, government and private/nonprofit sectors have addressed hate crimes by creating coalitions and opening dialogues among diverse groups.
“Although we have made tremendous progress, Asian Americans should not become too comfortable,” warned Wu, who is now Law School Dean at Wayne State University in Detroit. “We are tempted by honorary whiteness and the success we have achieved into believing that these issues are in the past or are no longer significant. But it only takes recession, war, a few drinks, an angry person, or a little bit of racial ugliness, for another Vincent Chin incident to happen.”
Events are being held in Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, Detroit, Boston, Philadelphia, Grand Rapids, Washington, Chicago, Raleigh-Durham, Salt Lake City, Portland and Milwaukee. Each town hall includes a special screening of the Academy Award – nominated documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin?. The series is co-sponsored by AsianWeek, Imaginasian TV, Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, and dozens of local organizations.
For details, visit www.apaforprogress.org.
Comments
Got something to say?