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Toward Barefoot Journalism (cont'd)
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So, after this Fifth Anniversary Issue, we will concentrate our efforts on summing up and developing new approaches to creating a vehicle for communication/expression/education that will be relevant to and meaningful for people.
The staff will be meeting twice weekly in the months to come, and plan to get together with various community organizations to invite feedback and suggestions. We will also be thinking of ways to keep our subscribers informed of our progress during the evaluation and planning period.
There is still the possibility that Gidra will be revived. On the other hand, Gidra may never "hit the streets" again in its present format. Some alternatives to be discussed include weekly or bi-weekly newspaper with more emphasis on community events and issues; a series of educational pamphlets dealing with specific issues, concepts or themes; an anthology of literature relating to Asian Americans or a compendium of past Gidra articles and other works; and an Asian American Movement news service. The scope of each of these ideas may be local, state-wide or national. It may become truly Asian American in perspective or more decidedly Japanese American in focus. One thing has become clear: Gidra cannot go on unchanged. It will change, but the direction and the ultimate quality of that change must be consciously and methodically discussed. And that change will depend on the future composition of the staff and that staff's perceptions about what people need.
A new staff may take shape in different ways, too. With the present staff as a nucleus, others interested in media/communication/propaganda ma y be recruited. The possibility of a merger between Gidra and another progressive media group or community newspaper cannot be ruled out. Or, Gidra, as an entity, may be dissolved, so that individuals from Gidra and others can have a new beginning, on an equal footing, in a totally different venture, including anew name, new structure and new format. In short, many things can be done, but hopefully, they will be accomplished by design rather than by default or accident.
Before we get too wrapped up in the prospects, I think it worthwhile to retrace briefly our five-year history.
On the campus of UCLA on the afternoon of February 5, 1969, five students-Dinora Gil, Laura Ho, Tracy Okida, Colin Watanabe and I met with the administration of the school to discuss the possibility of starting a community-oriented publication which would reflect the sentiments and ideas of the students and the communities from which we came. The rationale was simple: Like the rationale for ethnic studies, we argued that an institution of higher learning has the responsibility of teaching its students not only the ideas of the dominant society but the ideas of the many cultures and many histories that make up America. We explained to the administration that a forum for discussion of socially relevant topics as well as a vehicle for creative expression was urgently needed in the Asian American community. It was to be an educational experience, we said. The administration didn't buy it, but stood firm on its own proposal to publish a scholarly sociological journal to insure that a university-sponsored publication would not mar the delicate image of the university.
Later, as we sat and talked in the office at the Asian American Studies Center, someone suggested, "Why not start our own paper?" Good idea. But how do we do that? We decided that if each of us contributed $100, it would be more than enough to get started. So it was that five of us, students who had no practical experience in journalism, gave birth to the idea that was to become Gidra.
Tracy Okida, who had a penchant .for being where he wasn't, dragged out the name Gidra from deep within his nepenthean cerebrum. He had a way of making most politicians look amateurish when it came to impromptu speeches. One day not long ago, he walked into the office and soliloquized:
And that is how it probably happened for me, unless it happened the same way else-where. That is how I became involved with it and that is why I stayed. I'm glad you asked me this, because this is a very tricky question and one that is intimately connected with the answer in more ways than I can truthfully say I know about. After all, it started a long time ago and it's pretty hard to judge distances; it could be really close.