50th anniversary: Founding of Asian American Political Alliance

Some of the original members of Asian American Political Association and friends recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Asian American Political Alliance in Berkeley, Calif.

By Sara Hossaini
Reprinted by Permission of KQED
IN 1968, six young Americans of Asian heritage gathered at a house on Berkeley's Hearst Avenue to discuss how to create a place for themselves in the activism of the day.
It was one of the most politically tumultuous years the United States had seen. The Tet Offensive by the North Vietnamese was eroding public support for the Vietnam War; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated; and San Jose athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in protest on an Olympic podium.

Vicci Wong of Salinas was a 17-year-old first-year student at UC Berkeley in 1968, and she was searching for a place to contribute to what she saw as "the struggle."

"The peace movement was led by whites," Wong said, "and then I tried to join the Black Panther Party in Oakland, and they told me you can't because you're not black. So they said you should form your own group, and I thought, 'Well, what is my group?' "

Wong found the answer at the meeting held at the home of two PhD students, Emma Gee and Japanese internment survivor, Yuji Ichioka. They'd found her and the others by searching for Asian last names in the rosters of other political groups.

"When I came to the steps here and knocked on that door, my life, and like everyone here else said, their lives all changed," said Wong on Saturday at 2005 Hearst Avenue, celebrating the 50th anniversary of that momentous meeting.

RELATED: 1968 - The Year of Asian America

During that first session, the group coined the concept and the term, Asian-American, and officially founded the Asian American Political Alliance. Wong says they immediately looked around at each other and knew they had created something special and that they were representing more than just themselves.

"I went in Oriental and left Asian-American," Wong said.

AAPA established main chapters at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State, and the group helped lead unprecedented long student strikes at both schools, which resulted in the first Ethnic Studies departments in history.

"We wanted to save not only our communities, but establish control over our communities," Wong said.

That meant pushing back against the notion that they were perpetual foreigners and fighting things like the gentrification of San Francisco's Manilatown.

The plaque marking the birthplace of the Asian American Political Association.

AAPA co-founders in attendance said that their successors in AAPA and the people influenced by its activism have continued to fight for justice for their communities and others.

"We're seeing it circle back against Muslims now," said former Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who helped found the Asian American studies program at UC Berkeley along with her husband and AAPA co-founder Floyd Huen. "(Asian-Americans) are still not seen as full Americans."

For all of its influence, AAPA has ebbed and flowed at Berkeley, going inactive twice, including up until this year. But a new group of Berkeley students is coordinating the third incarnation of AAPA at Berkeley, calling it "AAPA 3.0."

"I think what AAPA means to me is learning from leaders who were really persistent and courageous to fight against injustice and to establish our roles as Asians in American history," said Johnny Nguyen, a first-year UC Berkeley student who's helping lead the current effort. "Having taken my first ever Asian-American studies class this semester, it's surreal to hear about my place in history in the textbooks. I'd like to see Asian-American studies expanded and enhance it. That's exactly what we want to do with AAPA 3.0."

Photos by Sara Hossaini/KQED

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Part 2: Nixon - The Traitor

 Anti-war demonstrators march to Golden Gate Park from  San Francisco's City Hall in 1967. 

PART TWO

THAT IS a pretty harsh headline: "Nixon - The Traitor."

For years, it was rumored that Nixon was behind the failure of President Johnson to negotiate a peace treaty with North Vietnam in 1968. The audiotapes of President Lyndon Johnson White House conversations revealed that Johnson accused Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign of treason for undermining the peace negotiations to end the war in Vietnam.

It wasn’t until earlier this summer that those rumors were confirmed by conservative columnist George Will.

If you're not a policy wonk, most likely you haven't heard of this sordid episode of American history. It's a story of greed, blind ambition, a coverup and winning at all costs. It may also be the beginning of the America's downfall.

In 1968, America was stuck in an Asian land war in which we had no business being in. It was the result of the Cold War wherein the U.S. saw a communist under every rock and would do anything to stop the spread of communism, which Americans thought was our country's greatest threat.

That fear meant that we would support fascist dictators who oppressed their people, fostered rampant corruption for personal gain as long as the despots declared that they opposed communism.

While a lot has been written about the banana republics of central and South America, the same dynamic was happening in Asia.

For fear of the communist Huks, the U.S. supported Ferdinand Marcos for decades, even if it mean that "democracy's showcase in Asia" was really a showcase for strongman politics and how wrong American policy had become.

A similar policy had already taken root in Vietnam. A series of ineffective rulers supported first by the colonial French and then by the anti-communist Americans, made Vietnam a perfect breeding ground for the type of dictatorship that America supported throughout the world. "He may be a dictator, but he's OUR dictator," was the ruling mantra among America's military and political strategists.

Mired in Vietnam for just over a decade, it became evident that a clear-cut military victory would be too costly, if not impossible. It was a virtual stalemate.

By 1968, fearing the divisions that wracked America over our involvement in Vietnam would grow even more deeper, President Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. He also began serious negotiations to broker a peace between South and North Vietnam, led by the brilliant Ho Chi Minh. (By the way, Ho Chi Minh initially sought America's help and even pattered his constitution after the American constitution. For some reason, America chose his counterpart in South Vietnam over the popular leader of the north.)

With Johnson not running, Vice President Hubert Humphrey took up the Democrat's banner to run against the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, who was President Eisenhower's vice president and lost to President Kennedy in 1960. The contest was a close one with Nixon holding on to a narrow lead in the polls.

In the fall of 1968, peace negotiations were making progress. As an act of good faith, Johnson stopped the bombing of North Vietnam in October. Peace - it seemed - was right around the corner. If peace was brokered before the November election, it could tilt the election towards the Democrat, Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey, as one of his campaign promises, announced in October that if he was elected president, he would stop the bombing, which won him the support of growing and influential peace movement. The polls signaled a virtual toss-up. 

Catching wind of the pending peace treaty, Nixon’s campaign team sent Anna Chennault, a Chinese-American in Nixon’s inner circle, to South Vietnam with a message from “her boss.” She told the South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu to hold out because Nixon – when he was elected president – promised a sweeter deal.

South Vietnam pulled out of the negotiations and the treaty went unsigned. Humphrey never got the bump he would have received from a peace treaty. Nixon squeaked by Humphrey and was elected President. In 1973, under Nixon a peace treaty was finally brokered. 

To say Johnson was "pissed" would be an understatement. Intelligence agencies' surveillance had revealed the plan to undermine the peace talks. Johnson called Senate leader Everett Dirkson to see if he could intervene. "This is treason," said Johnson. "I know," said Dirkson.

Under the 1797 Logan Act, no private citizen can interfere with negotiations with a foreign country. It is difficult to think that Chennault did anything – especially something as significant as sabotaging the peace talks -- without Nixon’s knowledge. He saw the memo outlining Channault's trip to Vietnam and he had written on top of it, "Top Secret."

Not surprisingly, Nixon, called by Johnson, denied any knowledge of the betrayal. 

Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford advised in a conference call a day before the Nov. 5 election: “Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected. ... It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”

The next day, Nixon won by the narrowest of margins: 100,000 votes. In January, 1973, Nixon eventually brokered a peace treaty with the same terms that Johnson had on the table in 1968.

Imagine if a peace treaty was signed in 1968. The war would have ended four years earlier, saving the lives of 22,000 American soldiers  and untold Vietnamese who died during those four additional years. 

Nixon might never have won the 1968 election, Watergate would never have happened, he never would have been reelected and a U.S. president never would have been impeached and forced to leave office in disgrace in 1974.

Because of Watergate, we Americans have lost our idealism and faith in our government; the trust and optimism we used to have has been replaced by cynicism and a distaste of anything, any idea, any proposal coming from government. The act of treason changed the course of our country's history. Our country has been on a downward spiral ever since.

Why does it matter now? Johnson and Nixon are both dead. What's done is done. 

The other rumor that may some day be proven to be true is that Ronald Reagan's campaign - staffed by people with the same win-at-any-cost values as Nixon's people - acted to delay the 1978 hostage negotiations with Iran to practically assure his victory over President Carter. 

History has a way of repeating itself if we don't learn from our mistakes. History needs to be rewritten, even if the truth is unflattering. People exist today who have the same twisted principles as Nixon, (and perhaps Reagan's staff). They would do anything to preserve their status and privileges under the guise of a faux patriotism, even if it means destroying our way of life. Win-at-any-cost is not a principle we live by. Its unAmerican. Its treason.

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Nixon was even worst than I thought - Part 1

Martin Luther King spoke at Cal's Sproul Plaza in 1967,  outlining how civil rights included being against the war.

IN 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese staged the Tet Offensive demonstrating how vulnerable American and South Vietnamese forces were and how fragile the Saigon government was.

In America the anti-war movement was gaining steam with each casualty report coming out of the Vietnam war. Nowhere was the anti-war movement stronger that at our country's college campuses. UC Berkeley, where I was starting my second year, was in the center of the storm. 

Richard Nixon

Even though I was in ROTC, I wasn't immune to the sentiment of my peers in regards to the war. In some ways, those of us in ROTC had more at stake than most. It was a difficult time for everyone and I was no exception. I was torn. I struggled. On one hand, I wholeheartedly agreed with my friends about the war. On the other hand, I attended pro-war seminars and lectures trying to find justification for being part of the military conducting what I felt was an unjust war where the U.S. shouldn't have been involved. These efforts failed.

To people outside of the campus -- people in the Midwest and those political leaders in Washington, D.C. -- it might have appeared that the country was on the border of a real revolution. The Beatles came out with a song titled "Revolution," and people who didn't listen to the lyrics thought it advocated revolution. (Video below)

Other social forces were converging - the civil rights movement, the country was still shaken by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the Black Panthers were carrying their guns in the streets, the Brown Berets looked threatening, Asian students and professors were grumbling at S.F. State planning the Third World Strike with their allies in the Chicano and black studies departments --  stirring the pot and added to this bubbling cauldron of social unrest was the anti-war movement. 

To lovers of the status quo, it indeed might have looked like the country and the old social order were on the verge of collapse. 

That sentiment forced President Johnson to decide not to run for reelection and the war was THE central issue of the Presidential campaign which pitted former Vice President Richard Nixon and Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

All of those memories and feelings came rushing back to me last month with the revelation of Nixon's role in sabotaging the peace talks between North and South Vietnam.

As if Watergate wasn’t enough to forever taint President Nixon’s record of public service, if he were alive today, he would be in jail for being a traitor to our country.

I didn’t think that this type of political commentary would fit in this blog’s format but I’m so angry, I had to write about it. Why mainstream media isn’t all over this story with 10 different angles; talking heads would be analyzing this on all our networks; editorials would be lamenting Nixon’s true legacy and Fox News would have figured out a way to twist the facts around and blame Obama – is beyond me.

The state of mainstream media these days is so sad I shouldn’t be surprised at their timidity. I guess the latest suntanning efforts of the Kardasians is more important.

For years, it was rumored that Nixon was behind the failure of President Johnson to negotiate a peace treaty with North Vietnam in 1968. The audiotapes of President Lyndon Johnson White House conversations revealed that the president accused Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign of treason for undermining the peace negotiations to end the war in Vietnam.

It wasn’t until this summer that those rumors were confirmed.

TO BE CONTINUED