Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

In April 2003, residents of fifty units of affordable housing were evicted from their low-income units in downtown Oakland, California’s Chinatown. The ensuing community struggle demonstrated the challenges of organizing and mobilizing in immigrant and refugee communities who have been subjected to the collective trauma of the last century’s wars and displacements in China and throughout Asia. Young people’s organizing in Oakland’s Chinatown was simultaneously an attempt to heal rifts within the community and between generations, and to articulate a normal and central space for a progressive and radical politics that is grounded in the migration stories of elders.