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6 According to Ali Shariati, an Iranian philosopher, each of us exists within four prisons.1 First is the prison imposed on us by history and geography; from this confinement, we can escape only by gaining a knowledge of science and technology . Second is the prison of history; our freedom comes when we understand how historical forces operate. The third prison is our society’s social and class structure ; from this prison, only a revolutionary ideology can provide the way to liberation . The final prison is the self. Each of us is composed of good and evil elements, and we must each choose between them. The analysis of our four prisons provides a way of understanding the movements that swept across America in the 1960s and molded the consciousness of one generation of Asian Americans. The movements were struggles for liberation from many prisons. They were struggles that confronted the historical forces of racism, poverty, war, and exploitation. They were struggles that generated new ideologies, based mainly on the teachings and actions of Third World leaders. And they were struggles that redefined human values—the values that shape how people live their daily lives and interact with each other. Above all, they were struggles that transformed the lives of “ordinary” people as they confronted the prisons around them. For Asian Americans, these struggles profoundly changed our communities. They spawned numerous grassroots organizations. They created an extensive network of student organizations and Asian American Studies classes. They THE “FOUR PRISONS” AND THE MOVEMENTS OF LIBERATION ASIAN AMERICAN ACTIVISM FROM THE 1960S TO THE 1990S Glenn Omatsu T H E “ F O U R P R I S O N S ” A N D T H E M O V E M E N T S O F L I B E R A T I O N 299 recovered buried cultural traditions and produced a new generation of writers, poets, and artists. But most importantly, the struggles deeply affected Asian American consciousness. They redefined racial and ethnic identity, promoted new ways of thinking about communities, and challenged prevailing notions of power and authority. Yet, in the two decades that have followed, scholars have reinterpreted the movements in narrower ways. I learned about this reinterpretation when I attended a class recently in Asian American Studies at UCLA. The professor described the period from the late 1950s to the early 1970s as a single epoch involving the persistent efforts of racial minorities and their white supporters to secure civil rights. Young Asian Americans, the professor stated, were swept into this campaign and by later anti-war protests to assert their own racial identity. The most important influence on Asian Americans during this period was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who inspired them to demand access to policy makers and initiate advocacy programs for their own communities. Meanwhile, students and professors fought to legitimize Asian American Studies in college curricula and for representation of Asians in American society. The lecture was cogent, tightly organized, and well received by the audience of students—many of them new immigrants or the children of new immigrants. There was only one problem: the reinterpretation was wrong on every aspect. Those who took part in the mass struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s will know that the birth of the Asian American movement coincided not with the initial campaign for civil rights but with the later demand for black liberation; that the leading influence was not Martin Luther King Jr., but Malcolm X; that the focus of a generation of Asian American activists was not on asserting racial pride but on reclaiming a tradition of militant struggle by earlier generations; that the movement was not centered on the aura of racial identity but embraced fundamental questions of oppression and power; that the movement consisted of not only college students but large numbers of community forces, including the elderly , workers, and high school youth; and that the main thrust was not one of seeking legitimacy and representation within American society but the larger goal of liberation. It may be difficult for a new generation—raised on the Asian American code words of the 1980s stressing “advocacy,” “access,” “legitimacy,” “empowerment,” and “assertiveness”—to understand the urgency of Malcolm X’s demand for freedom “by any means necessary,” Mao’s challenge to “serve the people,” the slogans of “power to the people” and “self-determination,” the principles of “mass line” organizing and “united front” work, or the conviction that people—not...

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