 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
Tribute to Chris Iijima (3 of 5)
Pat asked me to say something tonight honoring Chris as he receives the most prestigious social change award offered in the state of Hawaii. Some of you know him well, many of you have never met him – for all of us, I searched for words that convey the essence of this human being and why we should all be his students and why we honor him tonight.
I decided the way to do this is to sit at his feet as a student and see what there is to learn, gathering the yellow pearls, a random selection of five things Chris would like us to know.
1. Chris would like you to know that there are Hawaiian words for every kind of rain that falls in these islands, and that when the whisper mists of the tuahine rain fall in Manoa, as the late afternoon sun comes in from the west turning everything gold, you must stop, and feel that you are smaller than the rain. Take a deep breath, and notice. Remember that the Hawaiian people are the first people of this place, and their relationship to the rain is the one that recognizes what human beings need to survive and thrive.
2. Chris would like you to know that when Asian Americans gathered at Grain of Sand concerts, they heard songs in Spanish as well as English, because the movements for the liberation of Puerto Rico, to organize migrant farmworkers, to claim rights for latino immigrants were integral to the movement for Asian American liberation. And the claim of Puerto Rican sovereignty is a cousin of the claim for Hawaiian sovereignty. Whatever move is made to kill the dream of sovereignty will not succeed. The dream will never go away, because the human will to freedom will never go away, and someday Puerto Riquenos and kanaka maoli will regain control of their homelands.
3. Chris would want you to know that there are schools where rich children and poor children, Black, brown, yellow, and white children, are learning side by side with resounding success. Chris knows the teachers who know how to do this. Right in the middle of New York City, where school after school is labeled failing, there is the school where Chris and his wife Jane taught, where children from poor and working class homes are treated as learners, doers, and shapers of their world, with the predictable result that they learn and do and shape.
4. Chris would like you to know something about what law and lawyers and law schools can do. It is called justice, and there is no other justification for the existence of law and lawyers and law schools. He wrote this pledge, which all our students take, and which is worth repeating:
In the study of law, I will conscientiously prepare myself; To advance the interests of those I serve before my own, To approach my responsibilities and colleagues with integrity, professionalism and civility, To guard zealously legal, civil and human rights which are the birthright of all people, And, above all, To endeavor always to seek justice. This I do pledge.
In directing the pre-admissions program, Chris has produced an army of students who not only took that pledge, but who live it. He pushed, pulled, and shoved them through law school and into a profession that was not made for brown-skinned justice seekers from rural Oahu. They are re-making that profession, with Chris's voice in their heads as they go.
