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Today woulda been my great grandma Yuri Kochiyama’s 99th birthday. She was a civil rights leader who fought against racism & colonialism until she died. Wanted to share a couple cool things that memorialize her legacy:
First up is this documentary, MOUNTAINS THAT TAKE WING, a series of recorded conversations btn Yuri & Angela Davis: https://archive.org/details/MountainsThatTakeWingAngelaDavisYuriKochiyamaFullDocumentary
Here’s @IamSandraOh reading an excerpt from Yuri’s memoir. In this portion of the book, Yuri describes her & my family’s experiences in Japanese American concentration camps & the conditions under which she became radicalized: https://vimeo.com/1274843
This is an amazing story I didn’t even know about a young Tupac meeting Yuri at one of the weekly “revolutionary salons” she and my great grandfather would host in their Harlem apartment, which some activists called Grand Central Station: https://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2014/8/28/yuri-tupac-and-harlem-house
Here is a collection of grassroots art commemorating and celebrating Yuri from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center: http://smithsonianapa.org/yuri/
And finally, these are reflections on Yuri from her friends and peers in the movement, published after her death in 2014, beginning with a beautiful account by Mumia Abu-Jamal: https://sfbayview.com/2014/07/yuri-kochiyama-a-life-in-struggle/
