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Guest Opinion| David Monkawa: Message to Pasadena City College Board of Trustees

Published on Wednesday, May 17, 2023 | 1:28 pm
 

I am a member of the Progressive Asian Network for Action (PANA), an all- volunteer grassroots community organization whose members reside in Pasadena, South. Pasadena, the SGV and other Asian neighborhoods in L.A. Our slogan is “Peace, Justice and Equality for the 99%.”

In the past several months the PCC Management Association of Pasadena City College (PCCMA) has attended Pasadena City College (PCC) board meetings apparently with an organized agenda: To attack, bully and erode the credibility and influence of certain members of the PCC College Board of Trustees.

They appear to target the Board members who make up the new non-white Board majority; Board President Sandra Chen Lau, Dr. Steven Gibson, Kristine Kwong, and Alton Wang. They outrageously insist that President Sandra Chen Lau resign. This must end today.

PCCMA has lodged vicious allegations against the new Board majority for, “mismanagement, instability, misrepresentation of public interest, lack of communication and racism.” Yet PCCMA offered no data backing these claims that I have seen.

What is factual is that:
• On April 7, 2022, PCC President Erika Endirjonas received a “vote of no confidence” from PCC faculty senate, ratified by the PCC faculty on May 4, 2022.
• At a May 18, 2022 PCC Board meeting, Board member Sandra Chen Lau, quoting to guidance from the Association of Community College Trustees, encouraged her fellow Board members to take seriously the PCC faculty’s No-Confidence Vote as a College President receiving a “vote of no confidence” from the faculty is “a serious wake-up call to the college”;
• On February 15, 2023, The new Board majority adopted a resolution to not extend PCC President, Erika Endrijonas’ employment agreement through 2025 as PCCMA had wished. Does this have anything to do with PCCMA’s attacks? You can connect the dots.

For almost 100 years since 1924, PCC has never had a non- white Board majority. It is very obvious to me that racism towards the Asian and African American Board members is also a motivation in trying to discredit the new Board majority at PCC.

PCC is a great institution serving a great diverse and multi-cultural community, . Aa city that we all love and are proud of. But for Asian people there are dark memories of Pasadena as well. Memories we must never forget so that we must never repeat.

How convenient that on the occasion of Asian American Heritage Month, we find ourselves here to share our collective memories as Asian Americans in Pasadena to provide a deeper understanding as to why we stand here today.

For Chinese Americans who live in and love Pasadena, It’s where Collis P. Huntington’s legacy permeates so much of the roads, museums and culture of this city. He was one of the Big 4 railroad magnates who recruited Chinese workers to build the Transcontinental railroad.

So horrific was the pay, living conditions and work through the great mountain ranges that the term, “You don’t have a Chinaman’s chance,” became a common phrase.

For Japanese Americans, 19,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to the nearby horse stalls of the Santa Anita Racetrack in Arcadia which had been converted to mass assembly centers with poor sanitation and healthcare. Riots involving thousands ensued in August 1942.

Esther Takei Nishio, an inmate of the Santa Anita assembly center was 18 years old when she was chosen as the first test-case for Japanese Americans returning from the concentration camps.

So strong was the racist sentiment against Japanese Americans that the War Relocation Authority had to test the blowback one city at a time. She was allowed to enroll at PCC and received death threats and harassment from a local “Ban the Jap” Committee initiated by the Pasadena chapter of the Native Sons and Native Daughters of the Golden West and Pasadena American Legion.

Some of her white classmates had to form teams to escort her everywhere. The U.S. government was determined to make it work and declared it a “success” to hasten the resettlement. Esther had to leave PCC to help her parents make ends meet. In 2010, Ester received an honorary degree from PCC and two2 years later, was named “CA Women of the Year” for what she had endured as a young girl that hastened Japanese American resettlement.

Korean Americans who live in and love Pasadena, also remember what Dr. Sammy Lee, had to go through. The first Asian-American to win an Olympic gold medal in diving in the 1948 Olympics. Yet growing up, he could only practice at the public pool of the nearby Brookside Park in Pasadena on Wednesdays during so-called “International Night” reserved for the “colored people,” he and Jackie Robinson both. He would recall how the park would replace all the pool water before the white kids used the pool the next day.

So given the history our communities have endured, you might now understand why we are deeply troubled by PCMMA’s unjustified attacks against these Asian and Black board members who make up PCC’s new Board majority.

PCMMA is wrong on the facts and is racist on top of it. and we are here to demand that PCMMA cease immediately or we will return with many more individuals and organizations and take a stronger stand. An injury to one of us is an injury to all of us.

Oppose racism and stand for full equality for everyone at PCC and in Pasadena.

Sincerely,
David Monkawa
Progressive Asian Network for Action

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