David Wong Support Committee Blog
Welcome to the David Wong Support Committee blog! As of April 2005, this is an experimental project. Postings on the blog are not necessarily the views of the David Wong Support Committee. Instead, it is a forum for items and comments from individual supporters and from unknown members of the public. As you can imagine, the view of a single person does not necessarily reflect the DWSC's views. Also DWSC's opinions are not necessarily the same as the opinions of David Wong himself.
David Wong himself is in an immigration detention facility and cannot access the Internet or this blog. But we will try to address developments, issues, and upcoming events in this blog as best as possible even though David himself is not reading this.
Photo by Stefania Zamparelli
1 Comments:
December 7, 2004
Submitted by Steve Yip
Note: I wrote this after a discussion at a Committee meeting about looking forward on building the movement and struggle around David's case.
"More on framing our case..."
I’ve done a bit more thinking on some of my comments about “framing David’s case” in the post-9/11
context from last night’s meeting about the press conference. Please bear with me for a coupla of minutes
while I try to develop this thinking some more.
We’ve come a long ways, and some of you have been at it since the beginning. This recent development
also means that getting David Wong’s case dismissed will also mean that we will come into another chapter
of the struggle–to fight deportation and have him remain in this country. Even though David’s case, and us
mounting a campaign around him, pre-dates 9/11 by over a decade, the objective conditions in this country
has changed significantly.
Question: With the dismissal of charges against David Wong secured, has your faith in the criminal justice
system been reaffirmed or renewed?
The answer is obvious for many of us; but...
I am grappling with where the Committee and David’s case is at, particularly at this juncture but framing it
within the context of the repressive, and getting more and more repressive post-9/11 political climate...this
“juggernaut of war and repression.” We can’t conduct ourselves without understanding that the era of
George Bush’s New Roman Empire has everything to do with what we’re trying to accomplish–to free
David Wong–but not narrowly on the basis of fighting for a particular victim’s rights or just to provide
service for him.
Many years ago we grappled with these questions in the Committee and this process brought forth our
mission statement, which Wayne and I continually return to. This Mission Statement embodies the spirit
and understanding we had (at that time) that the struggle to Free David Wong couldn’t be conducted
isolated from the larger questions facing the Chinese immigrant and Asian-American community (and that
our strength comes from the people, it comes from the community at large), and that we couldn’t just go
about fighting for justice without recognizing David’s case is part of the larger INJUSTICE that’s so much
part of this country’s legacy that must be combated. I was grappling with how the David Wong case–in
order to move forward--needs to make a significant contribution to both to free David Wong AND to raise
the level of resistance that’s necessary to join the struggle to defeat this juggernaut of war and repression.
That’s part of why I thought it necessary to join the question of post-9/11 on immigrant detentions and the
general climate of attacks on immigrants, civil liberties and on dissent needs to be connected with how we
conduct ourselves in the fight to free David. Now they’ve begun to target Chinese restaurant workers in
outlining areas, by the way. This is another reason why some of us felt the Chaplain James Yee case was
also so important.
With the “re-election” of George Bush, we can expect the color of the political terrain to change
SIGNIFICANTLY. So many things about this country has already changed. We will be seeing more in the
immediate future–unless we do something about it. We are definitely seeing the further unleashing of a
rightwing Christian fundamentalist political trend--whose core has been driving the political agenda of the
Republican Party for some time--has been further emboldened in putting out their intentions of bringing
about a Christian fascist theocracy. They are trying to secure the “moral high ground” about family values
and such. But their values are about the racist death penalty, the continuing war in Iraq, the attacks on
civil liberties and dissent, the USA PATRIOT Act, attacking abortion providers and clinics, and framing
women’s right to choice as “murder,” continuing and escalating the tide of police brutality and racial
profiling against Black and Latino communities–and now against immigrant communities like the Muslim,
Arab and South Asian communities, and attacking gay and lesbian rights and to same-sex marriage, and
burying the scientific understanding of evolution from schools and even the sciences! But even more so...
they’re about building a world of non-thinkers who base their lives solely around the tenets of the bible.
Straight up–that’s what’s happening right now. We are sort of on a collision course... there’s two opposing
trains coming at each other. I don’t think I’m hyping this at all. Hey, last week’s Times had an article
about the Christian fundamentalists have already started a bonafide law school to train new lawyers to field
their theocratic moves towards political power... they have a very thought out, but perverted, VISION of
the road they want to take us down on. And many people have come to the realization that the Democrats
do not really want to take this shit on. They refused to do so in so many ways, and they won’t. The
Republicans stole the elections and Kerry refused to do anything about it. But that’s for another important
discussion.
And we saw the two contending trends during the outpouring of protest and resistance during the
RNC–these two contending trends out there representing different interests coming close to blows with each
other. And whether we (in the broadest context) come out of this also depends on whether we will be able
to mount the level of resistance and struggle against this juggernaut of war and repression will also depend
on whether we have built a climate, a culture of resistance. And a major part of getting to the other side of
things will also necessitate some vision of what kind of society we want. You know during the anti-Iraq
war protests one of the popular slogans was “Another World Is Possible.” I believe that’s necessary. But
who has the political power? And what must we do?
Many already know: I am a partisan political entity–being a Maoist, a revolutionary communist, a follower
of Bob Avakian, the chairman of the RCP; and I truly believe that there is a world that’s worth fighting for.
Yes, another world is possible. A world that all of us would want to live in. A world that understands the
weaknesses and strengths at previous attempts to raise revolutionary societies; a world that not only
ensures the power of the people, but also makes sure that there plenty of room for dissent and discourse
over a whole host of issues in fields of thought, including the sciences and the arts.
With the unleashing of this rightwing Christian fundamentalist-driven “juggernaut of war and repression”
these questions are increasingly going to be posed to all of us about how we frame and conduct ourselves in
this climate--whether or not you are a revolutionary, whether you believe that reform is possible.
While these questions are larger and beyond what the DWSC is and should be about, I think we can’t
totally dismiss them in our considerations. For one thing, we who hate this shit also need to address the
question exactly about what do we represent, what values we represent, what morality and what kind of
society and world we want to live in?
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