Song of the Week

Listen to this song, Atrévete-Te-Te by Calle 13 as you read to help open you up. My Japanese heart loves the lyric is “Here all the Boricuas (aka Puerto Ricans) know karate'/Aquí to’as [todas] las boricuas saben karate”

UPDATES and MUSINGS:

I felt a really strong surge of power and hope flowing through my arms when I watched this clip of Japanese American Rudy Tokiwa talking about how his friends on the football team stood up against the racism he and his brother experienced when walking home from school the day after Pearl Harbor. It’s the same surge of power and hope, which feels a lot like love, that I felt when I saw how many people assembled outside of the Mexican restaurant Las Cuatro Milpas exactly five weeks ago. Community members came to witness and protect each other against the 30 heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security, DEA, ATF and the FBI agents who showed up there. There, I can feel the power again writing that out. Feels good.

There are so many ways that Latinx and Asian people are connected, one big way is how we have been used as pawns to replace each other in the xenophobic agricultural industry in the U.S. (see slides below about the upcoming farmworker strike)that both is built upon our backs and regularly demonizes us when it fits into a convenient narrative. Ricardo Levins Morales once told me about a image that Juliana Hu Pegues found where in one photo there were Japanese farmworkers working the land, and then in another image of the very same land, but after the Japanese Internment, the land was being worked by what appeared to be mostly Mexican farmworkers.

 The Densho Project who interviewed Rudy in the above video say that they want to highlight Japanese American stories of the past to promote justice and equity today. Interdependence is where it’s at y’all and I just can’t shut up about it. It’s really the closest thing I have to a religion and I invest hard in it. It’s poetic that where community members in Minneapolis assembled was outside of a restaurant called Las Cuatro Milpas. Las Cuatro Milpas refers to the three sisters, corn, beans, squash, plus bee balm or sunflower making it the fourth or fifth sister. This metaphor, steeped in culture and land, tells a story of interdependent plants and people who work together so well that they have become legendary.

The word root for legend comes from the Latin word legendus “to gather, pluck, select" from the Proto-Indo-European root leg which means "to collect, gather, to speak, to pick out words". Isn’t that fitting? It reminds me of the phrase, “to become a legend in one’s own time”. I think legends are always living. We take something that works, something miraculous, something that is innate in all of us, and make it bigger. Whether it shines shines brightly in an individual or a story. Even when legendary people die, or events end, their qualities live on in others— both who knew them and in those who never will. A question coming to mind this morning is,

What legends live in you? Who do you need by your side to bring out that legend? What conditions might you need for it to come alive? Is there a cultural metaphor that supports you in this ecosystem?

I hope you can spend time feeling into interdependence today. While you’re at it, maybe get dinner Las Cuatro Milpas, or make dinner that nourishes every direction you want to grow in.

*Tickets STILL AVAILABLE for Watching LIVE VIRTUALLY! $10-30.

The link to watch the show online will be emailed to you 48 hours in advance of the show!

*IN-PERSON Tickets are SOLD OUT

Damn, we sold out in ten days for in-person tickets! Please spread the word that VIRTUAL tickets are still available. We would love to pack the VIRTUAL space! Can’t come but want to support our gofundme? Donate here! We believe culturally-informed somatic healing should be accessible for all, and we need your help to make it possible. We are independent, Asian, queer, women, and GNC small business owners investing in community wellness models and collective resource sharing. Donate to our fundraiser to support our efforts to keep our healing work accessible to everyone, especially BIPOC/Queer/Trans/Immigrants/Low Income people. We offer sliding scale and negotiated prices to make this possible.

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xoxo Eiko