Film Review: Comrades (2 of 2)

On the other side of the world is Alex Hing. Hing was born in San Francisco, CA to working class parents. Wrapping wontons in the kitchen Hing smiles, "This is what happens in old age, sitting around making wontons. When I was your age I was loading bullets." As one of the founders of the Red Guard Party, Hing is a revolutionary who memorized Mao's red book and believed in making revolution in the U.S. The history of the Red Guards began in Leway, a hangout place which stood for Legitimate Ways. Harassed by the police and with limited opportunities, some of the youth from Leway organized themselves as the Red Guard Party, named after the Red Guards in China's Cultural Revolution. Influenced by the Black Panther Party, a Black revolutionary organization, the Red Guard Party shocked Chinatown. "We made it clear that we liked Mao," said Hing.

Actually, there is a story of Mao, the Black Panthers and the Red Guard Party. Tired of non-violent protests and feet dragging by the government on civil rights, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, CA in 1966. They got their first guns from a Japanese American, Richard Aoki and patrolled the streets of Oakland against police brutality on Blacks. In order to raise money one of the first things the Panthers did were to sell Mao's little red book. Some of them couldn't even pronounce the name Mao Zedong but once they heard he was a revolutionary, they were down with Mao. The Panthers felt that Blacks were second class citizens living in an oppressive and racist society. They drafted a ten-point platform demanding freedom. Before the Red Guard Party was formed, some of the founding sisters dated Panther members. They invited Bobby Seale to come down for a talk and he encouraged the Chinatown youth to form the Red Guard Party. All the while this was going on in the U.S. the Cultural Revolution was happening in China and the Panthers and Red Guard Party studied Mao's writings and how to apply Mao Tse-Tung Thought to American politics.

However, the revolution didn't turn out the way both Wong and Hing expected. The failure of the Great Leap Forward and confusion over the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution disillusioned many in China. Wong wonders if the same fate would've happened to him had he stayed in China like his cousin who was attacked for having overseas relatives. In the U.S. the Red Guard Party battled the Kuomintang in Chinatown and later the U.S. government. Threatened by the revolutionary nature of the masses, the government launched a program named COINTELPRO, a counter intelligence program with orders to destroy, assassinate and discredit the movement. Under intense pressure, the Red Guard Party disbanded. Some members went underground and others joined another Asian revolutionary organization. [See the article History of the Red Guard Party republished in AAME. Ed.] Looking back, Wong doesn't regret spending his years in the PLA but now he thinks capitalism isn't that bad . American born Hing sums up his experiences a bit differently. He still believes that capitalism exploits people but the problem was that in his age, people saw socialism as the answer and it didn't work out the way they expected it would.

The film touches sensitive topic in the Chinese community, communism and the Cultural Revolution but credit should be given to director Edward Wong for giving a refreshing look at the meaning of revolution and its consequences. While the film may feel like a short 27 minutes and leaves the viewer with more questions at the end, it nonetheless is worthwhile to see and hear two men who participated in revolution.

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