May 1st! I was hella excited for this day! Yes, it was International Workers Day, which has also become Immigrant Rights Day! And, it was the day that I was going to visit San Quentin State Prison with APSC, Asian Prisoner Support Committee, for a big health fair. We didn't go as health workers but as prisoner support advocates.
We were part of a larger group of volunteers that also included the Black Nurses Association, chiropractors, yoga instructors, health practitioners from various hospitals, state health department representatives from Alameda County, and med. students from UCSF. Folks from a Latino Oakland based HIV/Aids education and prevention organization were sporting Super Hero Condom t-shirts, that I mistook for the Ghostbuster movie icon. Alfredo, an adorable member of their crew corrected me, "No, no, this is not Casper." "It's been a really long time," I admitted, "I forgot what those were."
I wish I had some photos to post of our visit but we couldn't take cameras into this maximum security neighborhood.
The group I went with, APSC, is a prisoner advocacy grassroots group that meets in Oakland. The group developed out of Asian activists organizing support to release Eddy Zheng, a Chinese American man who spent 21 years in prison, including almost two decades in San Quentin.
Eddy went to prison when he was 16 years old for kidnapping with intent to rob an immigrant Chinese family who owned a prosperous store in Oakland's Chinatown, and was released when he was 35. In prison, Eddy received his GED and an associates degree. He became a poet and organized a poetry slam. He was put in "the hole," solitary confinement, for rallying prisoners to petition for an Asian studies course to be included in the college curriculum. He self-published his own writings in a zine that he circulated in and outside of prison. Under lockdown, Eddy became engaged with the world around him, beyond his maximum security neighborhood. He sent writings to be published in newspapers, kept a blog (www.eddyzheng.blogspot.com), joined several self-improvement classes in San Quentin, conducted radio interviews, conducted workshops for youth, wrote curriculum for youth education and built allies by corresponding with poets, politicians, lawyers, students, scholars and activists. While serving his time for the atrocious crime he committed, he felt that the biggest step towards retribution to the people he hurt was to change his own life.
After serving a decade in San Quentin, Eddy applied for parole. He was denied over and over. The Bay Area community, led by the Asian community, mobilized to support him and that's how APSC was born.
Eddy was finally released from prison only to be transferred to Yuba County Jail as an immigrant detainee. As a green card holder who was convicted of a felony, Eddy was held for deportation to China, a country that he had not visited since he was a child. He was released in 2007 while the U.S. government continues to process his deportation order.
Eddy is now working with a non-profit for youth in San Francisco and actively shares the story about his transformation with youth groups across the East Bay. Whenever China and the U.S. processes Eddy's deportation order, Eddy will be removed from the Bay Area and taken to China.
In February, my sister Fui forwarded me a Cal Berkeley email about an upcoming lecture at Boalt Hall Law School. The title was "Deporting our Souls: Values, Morality and Immigration Policy." The email explained that the lecture would feature legal scholar Bill Hing, talking about the U.S. government's practice of deporting permanent residents who were convicted of felonies, back to countries where they don't have family or community support.
I thought of Tongan American brothers who are deported to Tonga after they served their time in U.S. prisons. For the majority of these Tongan American men, being forced to return to Tonga and to leave their families and systems of support in the U.S. is devastating, and many men commit suicide in Tonga. It has to be understood that these men already served their sentences in U.S. prisons for the crimes they committed. They are only sent to Tonga because the current U.S. immigration laws, in compliance with the Tongan government, require that they be sent there.
Under Bill Hing's biography in the email, was the second speaker's bio. This man's name was Eddy Zheng. I read about Eddy's pending deportation to China and his 20 years in incarceration. I recognized that Eddy and I are around the same age. I thought, "Wow, what does a Chinese American prisoner look like?" I had never met one before.
My brother-in-law Mo, who is also interested in attending law school, and I attended the lecture together.
It was a very compelling talk. Bill Hing was a very knowledgeable and caring professor who started by telling Boalt Hall law students and the larger Cal student body that they're really missing out by not protesting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan like he and his colleagues did when he was a young Boalt law student protesting the Vietnam War. "We shut this place down," he told us passionately, "You all are missing out on a really great time." And then Eddy spoke.
Eddy was amazing! He was well versed in laws pertaining to prisoners, immigration policies, the economic effects of globalization and gave thoughtful responses to questions from the audience. I saw that Eddie, having spent 20 years in prison, took on the persona of his maximum security neighborhood. He had a particular swagger that a Chinese man can only adopt from living day to day among black men. When he spoke there were detectable cadences of ebonics, street Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, etc. What does a Chinese American prisoner look like? A Chinese American prisoner looks a bit like everyone else he is in prison with.
We weren't able to talk to Eddy after his lecture because we had to be home when Niko came back from school.
I returned home from seeing Eddy inspired to begin a Prisoner Support group for Tongan and other Pacific Islanders in the Bay Area.
Two weeks after this lecture, I volunteered at a workshop that Youth Court in Oakland was hosting. At the lunch line, I recognized Eddy Zheng standing next to me. He's an extremely accessible guy. We talked over our sandwiches and I expressed to Eddy my desire to join and learn from prisoner support groups in the Bay Area. Eddy invited me to the next prisoner support meeting and that's how I became part of an Asian prisoner support group.
It hasn't been easy being a member of an Asian organization. This Asian prisoner support group does not use "Pacific Islander" in its name and explicitly states that it is an Asian prisoner support group. They provide support for Asian prisoners, but they also provide support for non Asian prisoners, including Latinos, Whites, African Americans and Pacific Islanders.
As many Pacific Islanders have confronted and experienced in working under the U.S. government rubric of API, Asian Pacific Islander, that the "Pacific Islander" part is not taken seriously and not given full representation. API organizations serve Asian communities and do not address the particularities and complexities of Pacific Island communities. The API rubric can never adequately represent Pacific Islanders. It is important to have organizations and government and private funding for Asian people. It is just as important to have organizations and funding for Pacific Island people. There are movements led by Pacific Island activists that call to stop the
use of the API label because Pacific Islanders are silenced and invisible under it. These movements have fought for the inclusion of the "Hawaiian Native or other Pacific Islander" category in the race sections of public applications. I feel much more comfortable checking this box. There are no limits to the possibilities of challenging census makers and race cartographers about who we are and what we need for the survival of our people.
The members of this Asian prisoner support group are Asian folks who are incredibly committed, intelligent, experienced, educated and enthusiastic. Although I had a great time at the first meeting I attended, I went home deciding that I would stop going and spend my energies on working with Pacific Islanders instead. I felt resentful that I was the only Tongan in a room of Asians who were always talking about API, Asian Pacific Island work, yet they weren't working with Tongans, Samoans, Hawaiians, Fijians, Maoris, Chammoru, etc. I thought, "Hell, I'll do "real" PI work by soliciting Pacific Islanders to begin a PI prisoner support group."
However, I was still on the group's listserv and I read how these Asian folks were trying hard to help Asian prisoners, and non-Asians, including Pacific Islanders in prisons. I started to cool my anger and to view these Asian activists, like the prisoners and ex-prisoners at EPOCA in Worcester, Massachusetts, as potential teachers and essential allies.
And, Fui reminded me, "Loa, go and have that conversation (about APIs and real representation for PIs). It's important that those Asian activists, who sound like great people, understand the issue from your point of view."
So when the April monthly meeting arrived, I caught the bus at San Pablo to Oaktown.
This Asian support group gave me access to visit San Quentin.
There were four of us who went to San Quentin. May 1st was a cold and rainy day. I didn't realize that when I rushed out of the house without a jacket or an umbrella. I was running late and wrongly predicted that the sun would eventually show up for the rest of the May Day celebrations later that day.
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