It is a simple phrase
that has become his guiding principle in a life devoted to Asian American
civil rights - "When you see injustice," Ling-chi Wang translates,
"protest."
The 63- year-old coordinator of the Asian American studies
program at the University of California at Berkeley has been called the
"Asian Martin Luther King" for his four decades of activism.
His latest case is winning his toughest challenge yet
-- improving the lot of Asian American scientists at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratories and the nation's other weapons research facilities.
Wang successfully fought for bilingual education in San
Francisco in the '70s, the establishment of an ethnic studies department
at UC Berkeley in the early '90s and revised height requirements for San
Francisco police and firefighters.
In the wake of the Wen Ho Lee spy case, Wang and an Asian
American academic organization instituted a boycott of the two labs run
by the University of California, in Livermore and Los Alamos, N.M.
Wang immigrated to the United States in 1957, and in
the years since, has devoted himself to speaking up for Asian American
rights and, occasionally, speaking out against Asian Americans who he
feels have tried to isolate themselves from the community at large.
Wang founded the Chinese for Affirmative Action civil
rights group. He's never had any political aspirations of his own, so
he's not afraid of making enemies."
In 1996, he angered some liberal Asian Americans by speaking
out against President Bill Clinton and fund- raiser John Huang in the
Democratic Party fund-raising scandal. In 1984, he received death threats
from people in Taiwan for chairing the Committee to Obtain Justice for
Henry Liu, a Daly City journalist killed by gangs linked to the Taiwanese
government.
HAZEL
YING LEE
Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese American woman to
fly military planes in U.S. history. She was the last American woman pilot
to die in a military plane in World War II.
Hazel was one of nine children and was a first generation
Chinese American. After high school, she learned to fly at Swan Island,
Portland. She also trained in aerobatics. She went to China during the
Sino-Japan war but was not allowed to fly.
When she returned to the U. S., she moved to New York
and supported the Chinese in procurement of materials for China. After
completing basic WASP training on August 7, 1943, she reported to the
3rd Ferring Group in Romulus, Michigan. She died on November 23, 1944.
ERIC
BYLER
This first time writer/director Eric
Byler made the acclaim film "Charlotte
Sometimes" on a micro-budget of twenty thousand ($20,000) dollars.
The film
has won awards at South by Southwest and the Florida Film Festival. Now,
Charlotte Sometimes is vying for the John Cassavetes Independent Spirit
Award for best film made for under $500,000 and one of its stars, Jacqueline
Kim, is up for a best supporting actress Independent Spirit Award.
The film will be in selected
theaters starting in May 2003. To discover what the initial dates
and theaters where the movie will be seen, click CLICK
HERE. Click HERE
to learn more about "Charlotte Sometimes."
Click
HERE to learn more about Eric Byler.
