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Toward Barefoot Journalism (cont'd)
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The ever-changing conditions call for deeper analysis, new strategies and greater resolve. And we need to understand the present, not as a static and isolated instant, but as a flowing moment in history.
Bruce Iwasaki, a son of a produce man and a graduate of UCLA, is an avid reader and a prolific writer who once wanted to be the Asian American Shakespeare. Now, he is more concerned with change, and the lack of change. The disciplined in-house expert on Vietnam deliberated in his usual analytical and long-winded way:
From my limited, absent-minded perspective (L.A. Japanese American, male, "student"), it's hard to say how the Asian movement has progressed except to be simply older, larger and different. It probably has less per capita macho trips than three years ago, less level chaos than two years ago, less tripping on and stumbling over new personal-political relationships than last year. Things seem to be condensing, settling (collectives, study groups) even as they are beginning (Women's Center) or restructuring (everybody). And though most individuals are less spread out-without, as one friend says, the urge to attend every movement meeting around-groups, projects, and organizations also get isolated. Even among friends, it's hard to keep abreast-if you're in different work areas. (Gidra hasn't always been much help on this I'm afraid, we all share in that blame). With this happening it is no wonder that coalitions so far have been precarious structures: either dissolving as they spread, coalescing no new minds, or never seeing day.
Our hand-waving sort of communications is, I trust, temporary for now. Somehow I figure some structural networks will evolve to remedy that. What concerns me much more is the communication over time. I mean this: Many people who come into the movement now don't think of themselves as stepping into any historical train of events - any movement - at all. Programs, platforms and people are givens. Proof that this occurs is demonstrated by people still having to go through anyone of a variety of movement syndromes (macho, overextension, elitism, etc.). And on every hand there's still the rhetoric. Maybe all these rites of passage are necessary; I don't know. But with our expanding sense of numbers, consciousness, and possibilities, comes an enlarged responsibility too. That is, the responsibility for preserving the movement's past, its sequence of ideas, its different experiences, its changing spirit. Many of us know as little about where we've come from in five years as we do about the Nisei Progressives in the '40s or the Issei socialist labor organizers of the '30s. We don't need scrapbooks. But we somehow need to institutionalize the lessons we learn. Allow for an expanding of consciousness instead of the diminution of consciousness which comes every political generation every eight months or so. I don't know what the mechanism will look like. I don't even know whether it's bound within our will or our karma. That such humble prerequisites seem like such lofty goals shows how far away is our political horizon. But without a sense of past how can we have a set of plans? And without plans how will we determine if that horizon heralds the New Day, or more neon?
The advances in political theory, as in other fields, belong to a long historical process whose links are connecting, adding up, molding and constantly perfecting themselves. We, therefore, need to interpret history, understand its dynamics, predict the future. Then the world must not only be analyzed, it must be transformed. In that light, Gidra becomes not only the chroniclers of events, but the makers of history as well.
During the last five years-a long time, yet really so short-we have learned slowly, and sometimes painfully, to do things that had been totally alien to us before, to become aware of ourselves and others, and to look at the conditions around us in ways very different from the traditional view. Often, we were called upon to do things that made us feel uncomfortable at first: participating in marches and demonstrations, speaking before large audiences, appearing on radio and television programs, selling the paper, and sharing with each other some of our deepest feelings and most private thoughts.
As we continue to struggle, what needs remembering now is the richness and vitality of this total experience called Gidra, which is much more than just a newspaper. It has been an experience in sharing-in giving and receiving-in a sisterly- and brotherly atmosphere. It has meant a chance to actively work for something we really believe in. It has meant a chance to express ourselves in a variety of ways. It has been a lesson in humility and perseverance. It has meant working with people who care about people, and genuinely feeling the strength that can only come out of collective experience.
But, what a struggle!