Students of Chinese descent were the biggest component of the conference, which also included youth of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Indian, Laotian, Japanese, Filipino, and other nation origins. They came from more than 20 universities and colleges from around the Midwest and as far away as California and Massachusetts.

After hosting their first national gathering in 2004 at the University of Southern California, conference organizers explained, they decided to hold this one in the Midwest given the region’s growing Asian and Pacific American population. Asian youth are 17 percent of the student body at Northwestern University and one-quarter of the 25,000 students at the University of Illinois in Chicago (UIC).

The heart of the conference was a full day of more than 30 workshops on a wide variety of topics. Among these were “The New Immigrant Rights Movement”; “Rebuilding Community, Creating a Voice”; “Race, Gender and Sexuality”; “Putting the Action Back in Affirmative Action”; “Who Are We”; “Asian American Studies Campaigns”; “Environmental Justice 101”; and “Organizing APA [Asian Pacific American] Women.”

The workshop on “Rebuilding Community, Creating a Voice” took up struggles by the Vietnamese community of 6,000 in New Orleans, one of the main concentrations of Vietnamese in the country. Minh Nguyen, from the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association of New Orleans, has been part of protests demanding decent housing and opposing the development of a toxic landfill in the Vietnamese community.

“We knew before Hurricane Katrina hit that we couldn’t depend on the government. That’s why we organized so quickly to fight for our rights and try to rebuild,” he said. “Many from the Vietnamese community around the country came to help us. The youth where I live organized to drive the elderly to the protests.”

In the “Asian American Studies Campaign” workshop, UIC students Bettina Johnson and Aaditi Dubale discussed the 15-year-long fight to win an Asian American Studies Department at their campus. In 2005 students and their supporters finally won an Asian American Research Center. The fight for a fully accredited department and the option to major in Asian American studies continues.  
 
Chinese in Cuba, Cuba in the world
One of the best-attended workshops featured a panel presentation on the book Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese-Cuban Generals in the Cuban Revolution.

The workshop was chaired by Michelle Tsao, president of the Chinese Students Association at Northwestern University. Having grown up in Hong Kong, she said, it was here in the United States that she really learned of discrimination.

Tsao said that before reading this book she had not known there were Chinese in Cuba. She was inspired to learn how Chinese, former African slaves, and Cubans of European origins had surmounted historical and cultural barriers and come together in the struggle for Cuban independence in the latter half of the 19th century.

As a premed student, she was impressed with the role of Cuban volunteer doctors in Venezuela. In the United States, she said, “most become doctors for money and prestige. The fact that the Cuban doctors go to the poorest areas and treat people for free is really admirable. That’s what medicine should be.”

Mary-Alice Waters, editor of Our History Is Still Being Written and facilitator of the workshop that drew some 35 conference participants, said the book was “one of the best introductions to the Cuban Revolution.

“But even more important,” she said, “it is not just about Cuba. It is about us and why a socialist revolution right here is both necessary and possible—as well as liberating.”

Waters noted that Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moisés Sío Wong recount how as youth they became involved in the struggle that, in 1959, overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship and opened the first socialist revolution in the Americas. All three joined in Cuba’s defense of Angola against attacks by the South African apartheid regime in the 1970s and 1980s.

She noted that this internationalist course—which continues today with tens of thousands of Cuban volunteer medical personnel serving in countries around the world—is rooted in the same working-class policies that have guided the revolution in Cuba. They have led to what South African leader Nelson Mandela described as Cuba’s “unparalleled commitment to the systematic eradication of racism.”

The lessons contained in Our History Is Still Being Written, Waters said, “help us learn how to fight effectively and how to win, how working people can take political power, transforming society and themselves in the process.”

Jason Eng, president of the Asian Pacific American Coalition at Northwestern, said he had known little about Cuba and that the book got his curiosity up.

“All you hear about is that Cuba is real bad,” said Eng. “In high school we learned nothing about Chinese history in this country either, like the fact that Chinese fought in the Civil War. Reading the book made me wonder about everything else we’re told.” He added, “Even though the generals were Chinese, they felt they were at home in Cuba. This is different from the United States and other places where Asians are so discriminated against.”

Joyce Yin from the Asian American Coalition Committee at UIC commented that reading the book “took me outside my comfort zone.” She said she had “learned a lot about what is going on in the world and the huge struggle to overthrow Batista.

“In a smaller way we’re fighting for a just cause too,” Yin said. “We’ve been fighting for Asian studies at UIC for 16 years.”

Amy Gao, an executive board member of the Model United Nations at Northwestern, said the book by the three Chinese-Cuban generals showed “completely the other side from what the United States says.” Referring to Cuba’s defense of Angola against the apartheid regime, Gao said, “What is really unique is the breaking down of colonialist divisions between Cuba and Africa. And the Chinese population rising along with the Afro-Cubans and taking action together is also really unique.”

Gao noted that despite the isolation imposed on Cuba, the country has been able to develop and the book shows how “the population has been empowered.”

The conference participants also selected regional coordinators and elected a new national board to serve until the next national conference, scheduled for 2008.

Ben O’Shaughnessy and Laura Anderson contributed to this article.
 
 
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The 1966-68 revolutionary campaign in Bolivia led by Ernesto Che Guevara  
 
 
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