From the historic coram nobis cases to the state task force to study Black reparations, attorney Donald K. Tamaki has been at the heart of landmark social justice issues for the past 40 years. The senior counsel at Minami Tamaki LLP sat down with the Nichi Bei News to discuss the landmark coram nobis cases, […]
S.F. Public Defender Jeff Adachi, tireless social justice advocate and filmmaker, dies
February 28, 2019 by Leave a Comment
San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, whose David v. Goliath campaign for his seat in 2002 catapulted the longtime community activist into a highly visible city position, died Feb. 22, 2019 after falling ill during a dinner with a friend in the city’s North Beach area. He was 59. Described by many as a social […]
‘Fresh’ history of Hawai‘i’s Nikkei is somewhat lacking
January 1, 2017 by Leave a Comment
FROM RACE TO ETHNICITY: INTERPRETING JAPANESE AMERICAN EXPERIENCES IN HAWAII By Jonathan Y. Okamura (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014, 272 pp., $42, cloth) It is a somewhat curious fact that many of the people I have met on the mainland, Japanese Americans and others alike, seem rather uninformed about the Nikkei experience in Hawai‘i. (I […]
Numerous leadership changes at Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo nonprofits
January 1, 2017 by Leave a Comment
LOS ANGELES — After a long period of stability, various nonprofit organizations in Little Tokyo have experienced significant leadership changes the past few years. Dean Matsubayashi took over at the Little Tokyo Service Center, Leslie Ito at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and Mitchell Maki at the Go For Broke National Educational Center. […]
S.F. State to add $200K to College of Ethnic Studies’ budget following mass protest
March 3, 2016 by Leave a Comment
As budget problems loom for San Francisco State University, the College of Ethnic Studies was asked to rein in its budget as a reserve fund supplementing budget shortfalls for the college had run dry. While administrators promised $200,000 to help maintain the college, students protested it was not enough. The college, which students, faculty and […]
A Nisei resolve for social justice
August 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Manzanar and Beyond: Memoirs of Frank F. Chuman, Nisei Attorney By Frank F. Chuman with foreword by Daniel Inouye and introduction by Dale Minami (San Mateo, Calif.: Asian American Curriculum Project, Inc., 2011, 153 pp., $15.95, paperback) A timely and accessible memoir written at the prompting of Chuman’s children, who collectively urged him to “write […]
Watercolors: Estria Miyashiro paints environmental message
March 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Oakland, the city where I live, pulses with civic and cultural energy, but this vibrancy can feel muted by the specter of blight. A mood of desolation and general shabbiness weighs heavy along too many of our pothole-pocked streets, lined with crumbling buildings and weed-strewn vacant lots. This place is fraying, and not just around the edges, but at its very core. One way that folks around here have rallied against the […]
Unmasking the Yonsei: 4th Generation Japanese Americans & Our Relationship/s to Racism & White Supremacy, Part 2
January 14, 2011 by 1 Comment
Part 2: Removing the Mask Relatively small though we are, as a Nikkei community, our growing acceptance into dominant white, middle-class culture is something I do not take lightly (particularly as a Japanese American with European ancestry). I have come to notice that false binaries (i.e. “Republicans vs. Democrats”) have and continue to play a […]
Selma’s 50th anniv. march inspires JACL resolution to study African American reparations
“Frederick Douglass said we should have 40 acres and a mule.” Instead, America left blacks “penniless and illiterate after 244 years of slavery,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He calculated economic losses at $20 a week for 4 million slaves adding up to $800 billion in 1968. “They owe us a lot of money.” […]