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First Issue of Getting Together
Serve The People
40,000 people-young and old, women and men, children and babies-live in Chinatown. Most of us work hard and long hours, often in uncomfortable quarters - a sweatshop, a laundry, or a restaurant. We pay extremely high city, state, and federal taxes; in addition, many of us dutifully give money to various organizations such as tongs, family associations as well. In fact, we pay out so much that after all these "taxes" and "dues", hardly any of our hard-earned money is left to take care of our daily living needs.
For all this money that we pay out, our neighborhood in Chinatown remains dirty and unhealthy (because of uncollected garbage), crowded and shabby (what else do you expect when most of the buildings were built not too many years after Lincoln's time?), and our seven elementary and junior high schools are dilapidated and so overcrowded that the schools are fire traps, and the kids there are packed like sardines. TB and other serious diseases are more widespread here than in any other neighborhood in this city. The kids from Hong King who refused to be bossed around in the schools are compelled to drop out, and find it hard to find any meaningful jobs with decent wages. So they join a gang, get into trouble, loaf and run around, or get drafted and sent across the Pacific to fight our fellow Asians (the yellow people) in Vietnam.
We take a look back at the I Wor Kuen and their newspaper Getting
Together. The first issue was dated February 1970 and sold for 25 cents.
The issue included articles about problems in New
York Chinatown, about Serve the People
and Seize the Time.
