First Published: Getting Together, Vol. 1, No. 3, July 1970.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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It is often asked what it is like to live in Chinatown. What keeps Chinatown a community? For our people, we come to live here because this is where our people are. Among our own kind, we feel strength and peace of mind at the same time. Our customs, natural racial affinity and pride in living as a sometimes united community hold us and attract us to live in Chinatown.
However, in the course of striving for a united community we face problems put before us by an impersonal, crumbling, self-destructive system which pits one person against the other. The system makes people sell themselves out as pieces of merchandise, without any consideration for human values. Instead of making life a joy, it makes life a job. Every day presents new obstacles which deprive people from even the simple pleasures. One of the ways that the system works against the people that it is supposed to serve is through the process of business and corporation expansion. Business uses its power, using the laws and its money to force people out of their homes. This ugly reality hurts most when it happens in your own community.
In Chinatown, the half block between Madison and Henry and bordered by Catherine and Market is being torn down to make space for the Telephone Co.
In the process, 296 families are going to be evicted. This represents another intrusion on our community by the capitalist corporations. In such a low-income area, the telephone company expects little or no resistance from the Chinese Community. For aren’t Chinese suppose to be passive, weak and divided? The Telephone Co.’s expansion will increase their own profits and at the same time remove hard-working people from their homes. The Telephone Co. is truly working in the interest of a few. However, this intrusion on the Chinese community will prove to be a big mistake a gross underestimation of the unity of the Chinese community.
As a first step in asserting our rights, the “We Won’t Move” Committee, supported by I Wor Kuen held a demonstration Wed. morning at the downtown office of the Telephone Co. About 70 working mothers, babies, and students turned out. However futile this gesture may have been, it was the first step. The next step will come when they try to evict our people. For we will not stand by see our people displaced by the capitalist corporation. We will protect them at all costs. That is what we mean by “Power to the People!”