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NEW DAWN RISING History and Summation of the Japan Town Collective (2 of 7)
During the summer of 1971, as the Red Guard Party in San Francisco was breaking up, some of its members joined with I Wor Kuen. A few of the Japanese American cadre of the Red Guard Party-people like Stan Kadani, Leo, and Neil Gotanda-a legal person who worked in the legal aid program in Chinatown, San Francisco-went to organize in the Japanese community in Japan Town San Francisco (Nihonmachi).
This core of activists started a study group composed of people from campuses and community groups, about a dozen in all. The study group read Mao's writings, such as "On Practice," to discuss what was happening in the world, such as in Vietnam, in Japan and Okinawa, and also the concept of "serve the people."
Some of the core that was to become the Japan Town Collective came from social service agencies, frustrated about the limitations of that kind of work to address the root causes of people's oppression, alienation and internalized racism and psychological self-effacement particular to Japanese Americans from being interned in camps during World War II.
One important agency that many activists worked in was the Japanese Community Youth Council (JCYC). This was a mass organization that organized programs for the youth in the Japan Town community. While some activists were revolutionaries and Marxist-Leninists, most weren't but they did identify with the progressive social change movement. But the more revolutionary-minded activists were searching for a way to connect the struggle to end the oppression of Japanese Americans with the larger question of revolution.
New Dawn 3 - Building A Center
