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Filling the Hole in the Soul: New Otani Hotel Workers & Ethnic Studies
By Glenn Omatsu
April 20 2000
posted with the permission of the author
Once upon a time, teaching a class in Ethnic Studies meant participating
in mass movements for political change. The first classes linked teachers
and students to campaigns against evictions, struggles to defend workers'
rights, mobilizations against corporate greed, and movements to free
political prisoners. The first classes emphasized the responsibility
of teachers and students to serve their communities by confronting power
and oppression. The first classes not only studied social conditions;
they were set up to change them. Learning and teaching were rooted in
social practice.
Today, these types of classes are rare in Black Studies, Chicano Studies, Native
American Studies, and Asian American Studies. Today, there is a hole in the
Ethnic Studies curriculum. The hole is not simply the absence of classes. The
hole is the absence of something more fundamental -- the loss of the unique
approach to teaching and learning that once distinguished Ethnic Studies.
My purpose here is not to analyze why a hole in Ethnic Studies has developed.
Rather, my focus is on sharing ways that teachers and students today can fill
this hole. The key to doing this is to reopen our minds to a different approach
to teaching and learning -- one that links the classroom to mass movements
and one that challenges us to fulfill our responsibility to redirect resources
from campus into the community. Rediscovering this approach can revitalize
the soul of Ethnic Studies.
In early 1995 at UCLA, I had a chance to teach a special class based
on the founding vision of Ethnic Studies. Titled "Asian American Social
Movements: Grassroots Community and Labor Struggles in Los Angeles," the
class was offered by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center as aprt of
a series of activities commemorating its 25th-year anniversary, especially
its roots in student and community activism.
My class grew from a basic premise: that the best way for students to study
grassroots community movements was to participate in them. As a case study,
I focused on the efforts of Latino immigrant workers in Los Angeles Little
Tokyo to unionize the New Otani Hotel. This campaign involved an interethnic
alliance between Latino immigrant workers and Asian American community supporters.
By participating in this labor-community struggle, I wanted students taking
my class to understand the pivotal role that students can play in mass movements,
especially when armed with Asian American Studies. Thus, throughout the course,
I provided students with hands-on activist training in terms of formulating
an organizing strategy to help the workers, carry out community education,
promote interethnic awareness, build grassroots empowerment, use their research
skills for social change, and develop their own leadership skills.
In the course syllabus, I emphasized three main themes drawn from the founding
vision of Asian American Studies: 1) the critical role of campus/community
alliances in waging campaigns for social justice, 2) the strategic capacity
of Asian American students to both learn from and teach people in communities,
and 3) the importance of creating grassroots coalitions in communities of color.
