The Asian American Movement Today

By Michael Liu
1999

Community Development Issues

In 1971 Boston's first Asian American demonstration about domestic issues was organized to preserve Chinatown against land takings by a local university-hospital complex. That thread continues today in the battle of several organizations to preserve Chinatown as a residential, social, and political center for the Chinese American community.

What They Fought For

The Free Chinatown Committee, community youth and college students, who organized that first demonstration, burst into the offices of the executive director of New England Medical Center to demand a halt to institutional expansion. They saw Chinatown as a refuge for Chinese Americans from an oppressive larger society, a neighborhood sheltering a low-income, immigrant population. They fought to preserve Chinatown against development as a form of self-defense for the population. While the Free Chinatown Committee disbanded, a victim of its members' organizational inexperience, many of its members went to join and form other groups. I Wor Kuen, an Asian equivalent of the Black Panther Party, began publicly organizing in the neighborhood. Others formed the Chinese Progressive Association and Asian American Resource Workshop. The neighborhood was changing from new immigration laws beginning in 1965. The population came from more diverse parts of Asia. Pressure from outside development, particularly Tufts-New England Medical Center, continued to afflict Chinatown.

By the late '70s, members from the grassroots organizations, including the Quincy School Community Council, created the Chinatown Housing and Land Development Task Force to fight to build an elderly housing project. They saw the need for an organization dedicated to preserving Chinatown. The Task Force organized and defended tenants evicted from T-NEMC expansion and promoted plans for planning in Chinatown. While a number of the representatives from the other organizations eventually moved on to other issues, the Task Force continued for over ten years through the work of dedicated individuals. They played a key role in inspiring the Chinatown master plan, which the city agreed to in the 1980's.

The master plan imposed zoning restrictions in the neighborhood. This was necessary to limit development pressures, which had expanded from T-NEMC to include the expansion of Boston's retail and financial districts into the neighborhood. These zoning restrictions proved over time to be limited in their effects; developer after developer sought and won exemptions from these restrictions. Despite the death of the Task Force, the same organizations that formed it as well as others converged again to face a new neighborhood crisis in 1993. They came together to lead and form a broad-based coalition against the construction of a T-NEMC garage. That successful battle led to the creation of a new structure, the Campaign to Protect Chinatown, to take up the role of the Task Force. The Campaign to Protect Chinatown, with more formal alliances with some of the grassroots organizations, has organized the residents in the continuing fight to preserve Chinatown.

How and Why

Related Links:

Campaign to Protect Chinatown
Coalition to protect Boston Chinatown from harmful redevelopment, now part of CPA Boston.

Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center
Formerly the Quincy School Community Council