ICE OUT

The Nikkei Student Union at UCLA condemns the actions of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the actions done by the current administration. 

Today, February 19th, we remember and commemorate the signing of Executive Order 9066 which happened on this day in 1942. Our community knows and understands all too well the injustice of being wrongly persecuted, and put into camps. We recognize this oppression and are advocating towards a future where no one should be criminalized for their race, language spoken, cultural identity, or immigration status. We will not ignore or forget the tragic murders of Keith Porter, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and all those who have been ripped away from their families, their lives, and their homes. 

UCLA’s Nikkei Student Union was created in 1981 as a political organization. Today, we  continue to aim to serve as a safe space to build community and celebrate our common heritage and culture as Nikkei-identifying students, as well as stand in solidarity and offer community to anyone and everyone. We would not be where we are today without the Black Caucus and NCRR’s help fighting for reparations, or the Chicano Movement’s labor and redress solidarity. 

We have and will continue to stand in solidarity with the Latino and Chicano community and sincerely denounce the actions of ICE which we will all fight to end together. We call on policymakers to halt mass deportation efforts, to restore due process, and to bring families back together. No human is illegal, and we are not threats, we are American.

Solidarity with Palestine

In light of the violent attacks against peaceful pro-Palestine protestors the past two nights and the arrest of over 200 student protestors, we want to reinfource our stance that we firmly stand in support of students’ right to protest peacefully. The attacks and university response demonstrated a failure of UCLA and local law enforcement to protect its students.

Our administration made it very clear that the university would rather permit the violent removal of students, faculty, and community members at the hands of counter-protestors or police officers, than listen to their demands. We condemn UCLA’s repeated inaction and disregard for the safety of their student body.

We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation movement and support our community as the University of California remains complicit in the genocide of the people of Palestine. As Japanese Americans, our fight began over eighty years ago when Executive Order 9066 was issued, sentencing innocent people to incarceraton camps here, in the United States. Our community understands the consequences of silence during moments of oppression.

Remembering the atrocities committed against our ancestors through forced removal and incarceration, we stand in solidarity with others facing injustices and deprivation of their civil liberties and basic human rights.

We as Japanese Americans and Asian Americans more broadly, urge our community members to educate themselves on how we can use our history and privilege to fight for Palestinian liberation.

At the hands of the Zionist state is the oppression, killing, and displacement of Palestinians for the past century. Since October 7, 2023, over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Zionist attacks. Over 75% of Gaza’s population (1.7 million people) has been forced to relocate, with 62% of the homes there destroyed.

The population currently suffers from manipulation, disease, a water crisis, and a struggling healthcare system (25 of 36 hospitals are no longer functioning; the remaining 11 are experiencing supply shortages and power outages).

The majority of Palestinians are concentrated in Rafah, where the settler colony of Isreal plans to launch an attack, even though “U.N. officials say an attack of Rafah will collapse the aid operation that is keeping the population across the Gaza Strip alive, and potentially push Palestinians into greater starvation and mass death.”

But to those within and outside of the Japanese American community: we do not need a direct historical connection to recognize the injustices committed both against student professors at UCLA and against Palestinians at large.

As the late Yuri Kochiyama said, “The cause of Palestine is that of Vietnams’s; the liberation struggles of Mozambique and Angola are related to the guerillas’ involvement in Uruguay and Bolivia. The Philippines’ sentiment against miltary colonialism is mutual with that of Puerto Rico’s.”

Our struggles are inextricably tied to each other and thus, we must work towards the self-determination of all people.

ANTI-ASIAN VIOLENCE

TW // death, murder, anti-Asian violence, police brutality

UCLA’s Nikkei Student Union condemns the over 3,800 Anti-Asian hate crimes that have taken place over the past year. UCLA NSU also condemns the white supremacy, systemic racism, and police brutality that led to the murder of 20-year-old Daunte Wright on Sunday—in the same city that Derek Chauvin is currently on trial for murdering George Floyd. Our thoughts are with Daunte’s family at this time.

UCLA’s Nikkei Student Union was created in 1981 as a political organization. Today, we  continue to aim to serve as a safe space to build community and celebrate our common heritage and culture as Nikkei-identifying students. We believe the existence of this safe space in itself is an act of resistance against both the blatant and covert forms of racism we have and will continue to face as Asian Americans, as long as these systems of white supremacy are in place.

In response to the death of Daunte Wright and the increasing wave of widespread anti-Asian violence, NSU staff will be holding a healing space after GM on April 15 at 7 PM PDT. We will be using a coffee-chat format inspired by Changing Tides, to provide our members a safe space to process these events. We hope that all those interested will join us. The zoom link for the event is provided in our Linktree and is the same one that we always use for our GMs.