1 50 3 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/37070/archive/files/7bc65f40347a3e1efa95662643f353ae.pdf?Expires=1784764800&Signature=fR44UewsesV6RVWCOH6R-z8dzB4y-Sy2X-Wdw48E%7EPJHH1LMAjlFi4MaPDMVt4lQxWNP8BwR1bG0oV5q-cvrIGH07m9rdsitg-SubmGi%7ErwUAT-kswcx3-nJltdWx1ztAbLsMOS8igp4hBxpbuZCh%7Ep7ShZQDjtNnIXAbMPPAS2j4o%7E0Uu-Pr9Bsuu4gSqGvsLOJDMxfbl%7EGDHfIdMsf3SunE6oRMza55jhRbB2YtJ5%7EDqU9-Grol4pyjfjUAG7c85yZDRlT0rQmkits7AxUXRW%7EGklo7rxLzO5rGqwun0W76Zm%7EtZZ1M41zhfIJfC%7ER90I72nnLZp4XmWSeLlc1cw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d1be64c33cf6c51c37a8c9bf4a9b4361 PDF Text Text UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL CENTER FOR ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES / ASIAN AMERICAN CENTER FOR EXCELLENCE & ENGAGEMENT HISTORICAL MEMORY PROJECT INFORMANT: PAUL RATHA YEM INTERVIEWER: DARANEE KHOEUN & CHRISNA KHUON DATE: May 10, 2024 P = PAUL D = DARANEE C = CHRISNA D: Can you briefly introduce yourself. P: My name again is Paul Ratha Yem, I’m the vice-mayor of the City of Lowell. City councilor, vice mayor. I came to Massachusetts from California. I was adopted by an American family living in San Bernardino, California. This was back in 1976, 1977. And then I went to school. On the weekends, I went to volunteer at Cambodian church in Long Beach, California. There was this small group of Cambodian families living in Long Beach back in the late 1970s till the influx of refugees that came in the1980s. In 1980, I was approached by a resettlement agency called World Relief. They had headquarters in Nyack, New York. They had a direct representative for the New England area, Roger Leer. He was the associate pastor of a Revere First Congressional Church and he was the director of the World Relief New England region. His office was at his home in Malden, and the church was in Revere. They reached out and they said they needed to have a Cambodian speaking person who would be the caseworker to help Cambodian refugees in Boston. I knew nothing about Boston. I said okay, sure. I packed up my car and drove across the country to Boston, Massachusetts without knowing how cold it is in Massachusetts! Imagine from Long Beach, California. I drove into Boston in April of 1981. The reason why I remember that is because the Boston Marathon was running. I drove in and then went to Malden, that’s where the associate pastor lived. I remember clearly the address 555 Main St. in Malden. I stayed with them for a while before moving to Revere. At the time, I was just recently married [to] a white Jewish girl living in California. I worked. My job was to meet refugee families at the Boston Logan Airport. Back then, we don’t have email or social media like now. When refugees were on the way, the office World Relief would receive a telex saying that there’s a family—one family, two family, or five or six, with the list of the names, and then they’d say “will be arriving in Boston on Eastern airline at 11:33pm.” Normally they would send the telex a week, two weeks, sometimes 1 �a month ahead, because the refugees in the camps, they go through the whole process, and they get the departure dates, then transfer to the office here in New England. I moved to Revere on Shirley Ave, not a pretty neighborhood. It’s kind of tough neighborhood, so not many people wanted to live there. It’s a poor neighborhood, predominantly, white. And there’s one particular landlord who owned a number of three-deckers rental properties. I reached out to him and he said sure, I have an apartment. He loves to rent to Cambodian families because they don’t pose any problems. What happen is that… my job is to, you know, secure the apartment—two bedrooms and stuff—then next step for me would be shopping for food that were accustomed to Cambodians. The most important food would be noodles, bag of rice, soy sauce, fish sauce, and other stuff to keep in refrigerators. The night they would be arriving; I would just make sure all the foods and everything… Here I am, 11:30pm at Boston Logan Airport, Eastern Airlines arrival, so I looked up the flight number, went to the gate, and waited for the refugees. All the passengers left the plane, and then the stewardess came out. She would come out, and say “Who is here to pick up refugees? Cambodian refugees—refugee family?” I raised my hand, and she walked me to the back of the airplane. All the family are still sleeping because the time differences. Then I’d say, “ជំរាបសួរ (hello),” and they’d wake up, and be surprised to hear a Cambodian family say that in their own language, because they’d been traveling for two days. They were worried about “where we going to be,” and “do we know anyone who speak Khmer?” And when they heard that, they were so excited. Initially, I had a small car, a Ford Fiesta. Four seats, four doors, small car. I would pack all the families and they have their belongings, so I would take them to their apartment in Revere. So, my job was to show them “Here’s your apartment. Let me show you how to turn on the stove,” then turn on the stove, gas stove. “Let me show you how to turn on the shower. This is the shower, you turn this way, cold and hot water.” Kind of teach them the basics, and then they would just take off their clothes and put their belongings away. The first thing they do is make the noodles. They just want noodles. On the airplane, they don’t know how to eat the airplane food. So, they make the noodles, and they have it. By then, it’s 1 o’clock in the morning already, so I would say, “Okay, I’ll come back tomorrow at 9 o’clock, because I will take the children to register for school,” and… uh, before that—well, the first step, I take them to the social security office in Chelsea back then. I took them, say, family of six—parents and four children. Took them to the social security office to register them to get the social security number. That’s the first step. After that, back then, you apply, they give you—issue you a number right away. Then the next step, I bring them to the welfare office to register them for refugee assistance. A lot of people do not understand that. When, because the refugee assistance is administered by the office of the welfare department—so people that resent the presence of Cambodian refugees using that, and just saying that these people come in on welfare, are a burden to the system. Similar to the discussion with migrants from Haiti and from Venezuela in Lowell now. I register them, and they issue you food stamps right away, so they give you a print out—a check—a food stamp check. I would take the family food shopping with the food stamp voucher. Back then, there’s not many Asian markets. We just go to regular markets, pick up stuff people 2 �want. You know, they buy chicken, they buy beef, and some of the vegetable they’re used to, and they have the fish sauce I bought them, ប្បហុក (prahok), and all of that. They just buy meat and vegetables. They have rice already, and noodles, so… and then that’s the first day. And, I say, “Okay,” um, bring them to their home, “Tomorrow, I’ll come back again at 9. I will take the children and register them for school.” In Revere, back then they have the ESL department, and Mr. Vitrano(?), um, who is Italian. Large Italian population then. He would take and register and then send, um, [unknown]. Then after register them, I take the children to the Garfield School. Garfield school’s not… it’s… it’s nice, it’s… yeah. It’s nice, this school, right. It’s such a small, old school, similar to the schools here in Lowell. There’s not enough classrooms, so Mr. Waxman, um… Bill Waxman, who’s, like, a godsend person, loved helping Cambodians, so he made rooms available, to teach Cambodians, and he reached out to Massachusetts Department of Education for assistance, and also recruiting some Cambodian families who speak English, that’d be, kind of, professional. [Unknown] as a translator, work with teachers. So, that’s my job. P: The third day, I took the parents to… at the time, it’s called “employment connections”, has an office in Chelsea on Broadway, just as you cross the bridge from Revere, to register them for ESL class. We would register them, and remember that they don’t have a car, so I’m the only mode of transportation for them—I was the Uber before even Uber existed! I took the children from Shirley Ave or Highland Ave, they can walk to school. For the parents, I would pick them up and drop them off at the ESL class, and the ESL class teach them, and then I will pick them up after they finish. Usually like morning, and by 1 o’clock, they will be done. They come home, the kids will be back from school by 2, 2:30, 3 o’clock. And this process continued every day because, now, we’re talking about 1982. 1981, 1982, now more and more Cambodians start to come, and my job is increasingly very busy. Meeting—so the same routine repeats itself, over and over, that’s my job. So, by 1983, Cambodian families were a presence on Shirley Ave, and it created a problem. Some of the people there were resentful, resentful that Cambodian families came, they receive welfare. The resentment expressed itself in name calling, you know, calling “gook” and stuff like that. And then, the kids that walk from Highland or Shirley Ave were being harassed, pushed off, name calling, physical assault, pushing, spitting at, every day. The church in Revere—First Congregational Church, every Sunday we have a service in Cambodian language. Not all the refugee that came are Christian, but it’s time we come together and, kind of, you know, feel comfortable as a group to speak the same language in the same room. So, we listen. Here I am the translator for the pastor. I later became a lay pastor. Just, you know, talked about what the Bible teach us, so love everyone and all of that stuff. Every Sunday we get together, and here’s the best part—not everybody are Christians, were Christians at the time, but they go for just having time together as a group—as a big family. And the best thing to do after the service, usually like, like 12… 12 or 1 o’clock, we would have lunch together. We 3 �all have lunch, a big, big picnic kind of thing. That fellowship is really needed; it helps Cambodian families to settle, to feel comfortable. I’m the only point of contact that people have a problem. I would consistently receive phone calls. I remember one situation. Cambodian family was… somebody throw a molotov cocktail, with the gasoline in the bottle, into the home. So, the police were called, the firemen came down. I was on the phone with my friend from California, we’re talking at like 11:30 at night. I was talking, so then the operator cut in and say “There is an emergency phone call from the police department, or fire department.” I say, “okay, I have to hang up,” to my friend. And they say, “We want you to come down to Shirley Ave to help with translation.” In Revere, the police department, fire department, the red cross, city hall—they had my home phone number. I’d get a call in the middle of the night. Police asking me to come down, translate it. By 1985, the problem, the harassment, the violence against Cambodian families bubbled up to the surface. It’s really worse by then. I remember a situation that I went to visit this family that I put on Highland Ave.. I saw this gentleman—it’s a one way street—he was talking to a white neighbor across the street on the left hand side. Because… that’s not common sight—that you see a Cambodian talking to a white guy on the street. I knew it’s trouble. And he just bought his first car, it’s a used car but it’s his new car. He took his wife to the market, and they came back, and the white man across the street called him over saying that he’s speeding. How can a guy who just get the license speed, you know, down the hill? He was telling this Cambodian family, so I park my car and I walk down to him. Just before I reach the car, this white guy grabbed the driver—Cambodian guy—by the collar and pulled him out of the car. I ran over and said “Stop!” and “You can’t do this!” So, I stepped in between. Now on the left side of Highland, you see all these white families that live in the three deckers. On the right side, you have the three or four houses that has Cambodian families. They all came out. It’s a big crowd. And I’m in the middle between the white guy and Cambodian guy. Then the police arrive. The motorcycles. This is probably summer of 1985. The cops came, the motorcycle cops came, and of course, they went over talk to the white folks over on the left side. And, when he came over and he asked, I had to tell him what the Cambodian gentleman told me. So, I told him, so he dispersed the crowd and told them to go inside. Then, he left. Things like this happen a lot; incidents that Cambodians became the victims, and never make into police report. I reach out to the attorney general office. By this time, as I mention earlier, that the harassment, the violence against Cambodians on Shirley Ave, had bubbled to the surface, it got some press coverage. The one thing that I was able to do was talk to different newspapers. Boston Globe had a reporter that constantly reported on the harassment and the violence against Cambodians. Then there’s another reporter from the Lynn Item, and he was, writing about harassment and violence against Cambodian refugees almost every day. So now, the Boston Globe article get a lot of attention, and I got a call from the office of the attorney general’s civil rights division. They assigned a person from there…a young assistant 4 �AG was involved and helping. And I told here everything so she would then reach out to the police department and push the police department to do their jobs. She became a person that really helped solve the violence against Cambodians. The police department was forced to record about incidents. One evening, maybe 1984, (I will send you an article about) on Christmas Eve, I received a phone call from the Red Cross, saying that we need you to come down to Shirley Ave because there was a fire at the two family home on Shirley Ave. Both units are owned by Cambodian families. Somebody torched the house. The family were able to escape. They were out, the Red Cross were there to help them, give them blankets and take down their info. So, I got there and worked with the Red Cross to get the names and everything and explain to the family… the Red Cross put the family up in the hotel for that night. I remember so clearly after the family was taken by the Red Cross to the hotel, the fire truck was gone, the house was burned up. I was standing in the middle of Shirley Ave. By then it’s Christmas day. And I said to myself, “In this country, you know, Christmas is a season of goodwill and good men. We celebrate that in church.” I stood there and said to myself “someone must hate Cambodians so badly to torch their home, on Christmas eve.” I say enough is enough. I met with a few Cambodian family and some people that worked in different offices, and I said we need to do something. Let’s organize, and we do a rally. I think 1984, in January. Cold, cold day. We organize it, we get people from the Cambodian community, some teachers from the Garfield School to help organize. We talk to the parents and let them know, I talk to Mr. Bill Waxman from the Garfield school to let him know, and… I’m not sure if we called City Hall, but I believe we did call the City Hall. We said let’s meet up. The plan is that we meet at Revere City Hall. We meet up, and march towards the burned building. The stage would be the building—the burned building would be our background with the camera rolling on the speakers. This is similar to Martin Luther King, too; a peaceful protest, of about 300 people. Most of them are Cambodians, and many media were there. And t we have, outside people who are supporting Cambodians, who are fighting racism and the violence towards them. One person who came, I remember, was the president of the Rainbow Coalition. He taught at Harvard. I forgot his name, he passed away recently. (Editor’s note: Could possibly be Mel King.) The mayor of Revere, George Colella spoke and I was the translator, and the featured speaker. So, here we are, about 300. We have, like, about 60-70 children from the Garfield School, right. They write post cards and a banner. We write in Khmer and English “enough is enough.” And I remember we get—we made up a banner saying “enough”, so we walk with that banner, then we got there, and we put it up and it’s a sidewalk of Shirley Ave in front of the burned down building. As a result, more attention was paid to the city of Revere. The police department was under the gun to do their job. The Justice Department came in, we had the attorney general’s office, the executive office of public safety, and the state police. The city of Revere had to take this matter and control it. 5 �D: Well, thank you for that. You touched upon something that we’re looking into with the overcrowding in schools. I don’t know what the process was like in Revere, but in Lowell, there were a lot of issues, so they started renting out different places to put the new immigrants into, but that resulted in a segregation problem. There was an incident that happened with a 13 year old Cambodian child. We’re not sure if you know about it, but his name was Vandy Phorng. He was pushed into the canal. Do you know anything about it? P: Yeah, I know. And this is 1987, I knew about it. And I’m the one who organized a fundraiser at the Boys and Girls Club for the family; I know the family. The story was in the Sun, and then the Boys and Girls Club on Branch Street—on Middlesex Street, they wanted to do a benefit to support the family and I was part of that. But, let me step back into Revere. As the children arrived amidst the violence against Cambodians, Mr. Waxman also worked hard to get the support of Mass. Department of Education. Maureen, her name, you know, she’s really good. She step up, providing a lot of grants. And then she hired more paraprofessionals who speak the language, and then to create more space, the classrooms—clear out all the closets and everything—it’s not ideal. Then, the department of education, Mr Waxman applied for funding to build the bigger school on the Garfield site. So the state came in—the state, they have a hearing, they have a hearing here in Lowell—I came with Mr Waxman testifying how important for us to have this new school that have adequate classrooms for the new influx of southeast Asian refugees. The school was approved, the proposal to build the brand new Garfield school was approved. And the state, as you know, funded 90% of it. [D: Yeah] 90%. And then they have school committee meeting in Revere to talk about the new school being built. All these white parents opposing it because the current school, it has a baseball field, right? So the proposed new building would be build a new school on the playground—new playground, after it’s done, demolish the old school and make it into—put the baseball field. The parent that oppose—they don’t like Cambodian family anyways, they oppose, they say this is not acceptable because where are the children gonna play? So here I am, you know, go to the meeting with Mr Waxman, and I raise my hand and say “okay, which important? The baseball, or the education of your children?” So, then, everybody kind of pause and, and a few family who support the idea say yeah. And number two, they talk about the burden on the taxpayers, just like here in Lowell. But, I say look—the state funded 90% of the, the construction. Back then, like 3 or 4 million dollars, right? Just to have the money from the state put in the bank, you earn enough, you know, interest to support any, you know, tax increase that may have. But you have a brand new, you know, high tech classroom, and you don’t want it? You want to just, like… Finally, it got built and they named the school after this white lady who is really a racist. Katherine Penn, her name(?). She’s … doesn’t like Cambodians, so, of course she’s politicians, she played into her [unknown]. That’s how the new school built, and anybody that recognize with the name—oh, Paul Ratha Yem help—no. I don’t get that. But that’s not what I’m looking for—but at least, you know, we have a new school for our students, right? I think probably 1990 or 1991 the school was finally built. A brand new—beautiful. I walk up, and like, and… it’s near 6 �the beach too, it’s all glass and everything is new. Beautiful school. And I smile inside and say “I have something to do with this beautiful school.” In Lowell, I understand the issue of crowding, the classrooms, desegregation, and then we have the consent decrees that was signed by the school and city, you know. The bus [unknown]. D: This project started because we were looking into Vandy. Why do you think Southeast Asian parents—or just like immigrant parents in the community in general, like signed the consent—or argued for the consent decree to be signed. When they were like, really scared, like… you know. New immigrants in this country are trying to settle down, but like, all this stuff happens. Do you think there was a reason why they really pushed for it, why they really fought for education? P: There’s two reasons. The answer to that is, number one, that we came from a culture that value education. You know, I remember so clearly when I was young, my mother took me to meet the principal and she said—she said to the principal “Mr principal, here’s my son. Do what you need, all I want is the bone and the eyes back.” And I say why... What the eyes and the bone back, you know, like… [Yeah, so… [“All I want are the bones and the eyes back,” in Khmer], I said… I… till this day, I don’t understand. You might want to ask your dad that, because your dad was in education so he understands. In Cambodia, you know, capital punishment is common. It’s acceptable. The teacher’s gonna beat the heck out of you because you’re not behaving, you’re not doing your homework. Even, you know. I got in—when I first started, I was in trouble all the time Trouble child. Because I see school is just to go have fun, you know, so me and my group in the back of the classroom, the teacher talking up in the front, and we were having a [laughing] conversation in back. I was a bad student. Cambodian start [] in 12th grade, like first grade in this country, then go 11, then go to 10. So, the 12—like first grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, I was really bad. Then, one time I just saw the chalk like hitting my desk like [mimics sound effect] and then bounce off because the teacher was there writing something on the wall and he see me talking so—the teacher can hear of course, he just threw the chalk at me, but it didn’t hit me, it hit my desk first and bounce. [laughing] So we all look up, and the teacher say “you come up here!” so we have to kneel down in front of our classroom for as a punishment for But that’s all changed, you know, that’s all changed as I get older, I got to third grade. And, in Cambodia, at the end of the school year, the school put up a really big event, you know, at night—performance, speeches, and all the students receive awards. This is all grades, so if you in the middle school, back from the first grade up to the ninth, the tenth grade, things like that, right. The parents sit there and clap, and I remember looking at my mom’s face. I never forget— that she look disappointed because she see all other kids, you know, went up there, receive some sort of award and stuff like that. She was disappointed. And that’s the turning point in my life when I was that young. I think “this is it, you know. no more fun and games.” From that day on, I was always the first or second in my class in every major. In Cambodia, they would put out— like, they have the math and other social studies—they put up the list, so… student each month, how well they do. So, the worst month for me, I’m on the third—you know, I’m the third of my class. So that’s a bad month, gotta pull it up—so, but I always, I was really… a changed person. 7 �C: What province are you from? P: I’m from the city, I was born in Phnom Penh. I live in Phnom Penh, and my family is well-todo, middle class. I don’t know you know the—Cambodian have the [unknown], actually, we call it. Independent monument, right? It has big circle, and they have a beautiful park that will… one side of the rotary go towards the river, the other side is shorter to, kind of, the city. If you were to stand in the part that were facing the east towards the river, you see they have this big tree [Khmer name]. Khmer [“call it (Khmer translation)”], right. And they have the [Khmer translation], that mean, like… a house to send food to the spirits, right. You look up and that big [tree] is on your left, and then across the street from there, my house is across the street from there, is a small villa. Is like, a villa. And then there’s a street corner, street, there’s another prince like—royal family—we’re all related. The Sisowath family. He has a bigger lot, a corner lot, bigger villa. And then in my small villa is right here, and then there’s another villa, another villa, and then the big villa is Sihanouk—Prince Sihanouk’s mother, who, her villa there. So we all… Sisowath, so Cambodian royal family divided into Sisowath and Norodom. Sisowath used to rule the country, and then… Prince Norodom Sihanouk married a Norodom, and he became the king. And then Norodom family rule, Norodom family has their own compound—Khmer call [translation]. So, again, at the rotary, and then there’s one that goes south—towards [Khmer translation again], they call it, right. So [khmer] become the compound of all the Norodoms. Even Sihanouk has that. The president’s there. Big area, beautiful—and Sisowath [unknown] small strip of land near the independent monument. And that’s the answer to your question, is that we value education. It takes a lot for Cambodian family to really sign into this because, where we came from, we don’t speak against authority, right. Like I tell you the story that my mom just tell the principal “do what you need to do to educate my son, I want the bones and the eyes back, that’s it.” And then to come here to speak against something like this is unheard of. There’s a lot of education that go into this, you know, talking to and convince the family to do. The younger family that have some sort of education, then they will sign onto this. Not everybody. So, the older generation that came from, like, mostly Battambang, they themselves are not educated farmers, they don’t want anything to do with that. Only a few Cambodian family sign onto that due to the fact that they understand, you know, they came here, they had some sort of education back home, they came here, they have some schooling, they understand how the process works. So, they say “we want to do this to improve the education,” so they do this that their children education is improved. So they’re willing to do that. They risk their own lives, right, I want to call it. Signing onto this. D: That makes sense, like the difference provinces have different outlooks on education overall. C: I want to hear more about your perspective during Vandy’s time. P: Yes. In 1987, I was approached by a local bank here—it’s called Lowell Institution for Savings. So, they not there anymore, but the building is still there at the corner of Shattuck Street 8 �and Merrimack Street. You know where Enterprise Bank Headquarters is? Next to it, now it become a quilt museum. But if you look up, you see gold lettering say “Lowell Institution for Savings.” They were very proactive, they see a lot of Cambodian refugees here, Southeast Asians, Laos, and Cambodians. The president told me that he would read the Lowell sun and see Cambodian family was mugged and then they lost their money and jewelry that they—the lady carry with them. The president of the bank said “We might need somebody who can speak the language to convince the people—instead of keep money and jewelry at home, maybe deposit and keep it in the bank.” They reached out to me in Boston, so I came to work here in February 1989 as a community officer for the bank. My job is to educate Cambodian families. And as I told you the story—I’m actively involved in the Cambodian community. The banking job is one of the way to kind of reach out to the community, so my job is to help people, you know, put money in the bank, save money, to borrow money to buy a car—the new cars, and teach them, they borrow money to start a business, buy homes, things like that. I was actively involved in the community besides being a banker. And, at this time, I still live in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Remember I used to live in Revere, so I moved next to Revere in Winthrop. Yeah, just next to it It’s just too difficult to live in Revere and then you speak against the city, right, so I moved next door. I live—I still involved in Revere. I commute everyday, 1989, always come to Lowell. I never get home before 10 o’clock, because always get involved in the community. I became a member on the board of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association. I sat on other, you know, boards, who are, you know, in Lowell. Like the community foundations, like Lowell Plan. I was active, so using the bank position as a way to reach out to other institutions in the city of Lowell to kind of educate them about our culture as the Cambodian community and all of that. Oftentimes, I would ask to speak at the board meetings about Cambodians, about our culture. There was a Cambodian radio program, three or four people in Lowell, active, vocal, they have a Cambodian radio program. They talked about Cambodia, playing music, every Sunday. I go on the radio time to time, talk about mostly, you know, the bank products and stuff like that. One board meeting in Lowell Institution for Savings, I was talking with the staff and the board of directors. A loan officer said, “Hey, I have this Cambodian family who wants to buy a car and it costs $12,000. And he came to see me, he has a brown bag that’s full of cash, you know, put it on my desk. And I was like asking ‘Where you get that?’ and he say ‘Well, I save it. So here’s, like, my down payment.’” He has like 8, 9 thousand dollars in downpayment, and the bank was like surprised. And he… and then everybody asked me how does Cambodian family save the money, how do we educate the people to— instead of keep it at home, you know, that’s part of my job—I say, you know—I explain the story. And then someone asked—so, if a family wanted to buy a house, how do they get the money to put down, you know, in addition to how much, whatever they save, because most of them seem to want to buy everything in cash. And I explain to the board and everybody was there... that, in Cambodia, we have our own microlending. [Khmer name of it here]. I say we have this—a loan system, tong tieng, I explain to them. I explain that like—okay, we create a group of ten people, and then everybody pitch in… say, a 9 �hundred dollars. Ten people, you get ten thousand dollars. And then, you’re willing to relinquish that 100 to whoever willing to offer the highest interest rate, they will, you know, they will get that pot of money. So of a hundred dollars each, I’m willing to give you $5, so now I only put in 95. You got the money to do whatever, so now every month, you have to pitch in that $100. So that’s how the microlending works, in the real world back in, in Third World countries. We call it developing countries now. This is the system that started through the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the World Bank. This is similar to tong tieng in Cambodia. A branch manager at one of the Lowell Institution for Savings said, “You know, I notice that those Cambodian families came, they rent a deposit box, and they would come in and they would go in and they put all the money in the deposit box, and the jewelry and everything. Why don’t they put it in a savings account to earn interest?” you know. I said hey, you know. This to show you I did my job, right? The money from under the matress now going to bank safe deposit box, right? It’s the first step in the right direction, right? So give it time, yeah?” They all laugh. One of the board of directors, he’s the owner of that radio station. He went back one Sunday, he got to meet all the people that work… Cambodian family that do the station. He said “look, you need to educate people about putting the money in the bank and all of that, and then instead of…” and then he talked about—he learned about tong tieng and everything like that, right? And he was fascinated by that. He said look, you know, you teach people how to put money in the bank and everything, and He told the story he learned at the board meeting that day. The funny thing is that, rather than, you know, understand—rather than using that, they um…the Cambodian staff of the radio station, like five of them, use it against me saying that I did something that not supposed to, because, they say, “this is just for… within our community. We can’t just go off and tell the world about our inside.” I say “what…? Tong tieng is not a secret, this is not a mob kind of… you know? Shark loan kind of thing? It’s a system that we use it. I’m educating the non-Cambodian of how we come up with.” right. I didn’t know this story back then, there is a restaurant, right now, it’s the Hong Kong, like, Hong Kong Hall. It used to be [unknown] restaurant, and they sold it to the Hong Kong market family, so they converted it to the hall. It used to be a really popular place; they served Cambodian buffet, everybody went there. This group of radio staff, Cambodian staff, went there, and bad mouthed me. The owner is a very good friend because I was with the bank. So one day, I went to have my lunch there. The brother—they have three owners, two older sisters and the younger brother, his name is Vichet—he told me, “Hey, bong. I overheard they were talking about that you explain to other people about tong tieng in Khmer, things like that. And they were upset that you, kind of, tell the… you know, like dirty laundry, things like that, about the Cambodian people.” And I said, “Okay, tell me… is this something that we’re not supposed to tell the world? Is it something secret?” Because in America when you come up—like the story I told you that loan officer saw the Khmer family with the brown bag full of cash, they want to know where that money came from. Because in America, when you have a bunch of cash like that, the only logical thing they think it is illegal money. Selling drugs or something like that, right? And these people don’t understand that. 10 �We have to have a story, like you go to the bank, and I bring the cash deposit, $10,000, they make me fill out the form, and they say, “Where’s the money come from?” right? I have to explain. I say, “well, I just collect rent, you know. I have a three family home, and each one pay me this.” I fill out the form that explains to the bank where I get that. The same thing, we get the money, and we have to tell them what the sources are. In Khmer, they do save yes, but some of them use tong tieng to put that into the deposit to buy a home, things like that. But people fail to understand this system, and then accuse me of putting out a dirty laundry for the world to know. D: With Vandy’s incident, I’m not sure if the Khmer community had a different reaction internally compared to externally, because I know that sometimes in our community we just don’t want to speak out. I’m not sure if you know what the internal reaction to something like that or any other anti-Asian tragic incident in general, because there might be a different reaction, I’m not sure, but what do you think? P: Depends on the situation that you talk about. Let’s use Vandy’s story as an example. Oftentimes, the community blames the parents to allow this tragedy to happen to their children. Where were you? You’re supposed to watch your kids. Things like that. There’s a lot of internal condemnation because the child died. But, failing to understand, it’s not that he just died by itself. Somebody caused that death. Back then, the question is was there any organization among the Khmer that will come out to support the family that lost a child drowning in the canal? No. I don’t want to say this at the beginning of this—your dad is going to be mad at me because he’s the head of the temple. D: It’s okay, no, he’s not going to listen to this, don’t worry. P: Remember in the earlier conversation, I told my grandmother when I was in college that I don’t believe this because it’s selfish, they never help anyone. But, you know, for us to give money to the temple… haha, my grandmother was livid. P: We all go through that because we are more pragmatic and we go to school; we understand. For me, I sacrifice everything to help others, because at the end of the day, you know, you meet your maker—whoever, who will ask “What have you done?” So, then you can say “I did my part in making the world a better place to live for everyone.” Be the voice of the voiceless, stand up for the people that don’t have the courage or are afraid to stand up. So that’s my notice. The other personal story that I did not tell you is, remember I told you I drove to Massachusetts from California with my young bride? Jewish American, we met in California, so we live in Winthrop and we have four boys. We also were the foster parents, because Cambodian children were taken from home and they always looked for another Cambodian family to raise the children with the same language and culture. So, we took in a lot of Cambodians, mostly from Revere and from Lowell. We took them in—one family, the entire family, even the baby—she’s 11 �only three or four months old. And then we have our boys, who about five, and then six, and a teenager, just like fourteen. We took the whole family. The mother was a gambler, she would gamble every day. She met this old man, had a baby, and left the children unattended, so the CPS took the children away. And we took them. Like I mentioned earlier that I came from Winthrop to work here in Lowell, 1989, that I would never get home before 10pm every night, because I was out there saving the world. And I can’t even save my own marriage. So we end up getting divorced in 2000. But the marriage was really on the rocks way earlier than that, since 1990. I just knew that, oh keep it going for our children. But then, it’s, it is just can’t take it anymore. I don’t know, you are not married yet—but relationships are hard. You know deep down inside your heart that when you can't be together, you can’t be. You try your best. So then, the marriage counselor said that a good divorce is better than a bad marriage, so. But, that’s the price you pay. The moral of the story—the reason I’m telling you this is that yes, you go save the world, but be sure you save your own family too. My four boys, they’re all grown up now. Two in New York, and the other two with my ex in San Francisco, California. They don’t want anything to do with me, because I wasn’t there for them. Because I was always out there for other people, but not them. But that’s the moral of the story, my personal story, that I want to tell you that. It’s important that your children need you. And now I’m married, I have two boys… two boys, and the older one, he’s first year at UMass Lowell. The youngest one, Justin, is going to the prom tonight He’s graduating from the Greater Lowell Voke. So, from that experience, I make sure that never go through that. They need the father, not just the world out there. C: I go to school, I go to work, and at night, I come home and take care of my grandma—oh no, I’m gonna cry. She’d say “Don’t leave me!” and I said “I have to, ma! I have to go to school and work!” P: That’s the story we all go through. That’s the other side effect of the war—side effect of what happened to our family. We all have a story to tell. Some turn to alcohol, the younger generation now turns to drugs. The older generation turned to alcohol or gambling. We have issues—big issues in the community about gambling, because from outside, an addiction for people who go through—it’s a way to escape, to escape the reality. P: Researchers go to Encore and walk up to some of the Cambodian families. You see some people say “oh, we go visit Encore.” Stuff like that. My wife, and my in-law side of the family, they used to, after Christmas, open gifts, then they would go down to Foxborough avenue and they say “Oh, we don’t have to gamble, just go eat and walk around.” and I say “but it’s the temptation, and you don’t want to put yourself in that because you don’t know how crazy you can be.” You know, they… [unknown] and they get you out, people lose their homes, people lost everything because it’s just like.. They get sucked into it, chasing after that. So, I tell my wife, “we can go somewhere else, why do we have to go to the casino?” She say “Oh, just go and eat 12 �and walk around.” I say “Yeah, we can go walk around some other mall, shopping areas, things like that.” I never, never ever set foot and eat at a casino, because—number one, I take pride and say “look, I don’t gamble.” I don’t want people to perceive “Oh look, he go to the casino, so it’s okay for us.” No, I see people using that. But, back in 19… 96, 97, they have an Asian market— marketing firm from Boston, Chinatown, they do a bus. Mohegan Sun will come with a bus, pick up people at different locations… [P talks about his only involvement with Mohegan Sun casino, which featured him as an event planner that focused on something for the Cambodian community.] P: We set up the [unknown] for five hundred seats, right? And then, he said “what about the food?” I said the food we can do a buffet style on each side, have the dance floor—we need the dance floor. He said okay. He said “How much is that gonna cost you to put that all together?” And then the tickets. He said “Oh the tickets, we have the VIP tickets—$35, and then the regular tickets—$20, $25.” So Mohegan Sun would print out all that, the VIP tickets—so what Mohegan Sun did, they give out all the tickets to the high rollers, all the high rollers and everything. So then… and they say okay, we’ll take 250 tickets, with the VIP and regular tickets, and you can sell whatever tickets and keep [unknown]. It’s a deal. They give me some money on top of that to pay the band, and then I brought in the Khmer band. At the time, it was like, Angkor Dance troupe—but it was not really Angkor dance troupe, it’s just some dancing group, but they don’t have a name yet. You know, perform that beginning, and then we have the dance, and before you know it—we have more than—we have 700+ people were there. From all over. We’re talking about Connecticut, Rhode Island, some from New York come up. Having fun—they have all these people have these tickets, because these high rollers, they get a VIP ticket from the casino. And they bring their families and everything—it’s packed. Being… really not a party organizer, and I learned later, people would just go to the bathroom and they pass the ticket to their friend, and then they... So if you come with your friends, you have five people, you have five tickets. You have to the stuff, one of you go off to the bathroom, bring that five, and you give it to your friend in the bathroom—four tickets, right? So they have the stuff to go back inside, but they didn’t buy the tickets. So you have all of that, right? The cheating going on. I was… the lady, she was the singer, she sing in the band [unknown]. She’s the one who helped me organize. And that’s my only connection to Mohegan Sun at the Casino, and I did another show—it was a big show—but that’s the reason. I chaired the water festival one year, and I ask them to underwrite them—so they give $5000, and we give them a booth. And i get the red flag push back from the community saying I’m promoting gambling. I say look—my job is to bring money back to our community because—we take their money or not, our community go casino, give them money everyday. They have buses come in everyday, you see it. So, at least I get some money back to our community to do something. They don’t understand—they don’t see that. P: Yeah, that’s the one thing they are not very good at in… you know, like, going to get money from supporters. That year, we had so much money—Mohegan sun gave $5,000, just nothing, and we give them a booth and that’s it. 13 �C: These people don’t even go to the booth, they go to the casino. P: Everyday, they get it. They know what it is. All i’m trying to do is get money back from the casino at least to give back, just like any businesses in America. They have a foundation, they give money back to the community. Why not getting back from Mohegan sun and Foxborough? Because they took a lot of money from our community. But anyway, sometimes it’s… like, you ask me to speak on the gambling, it’s not… imagine tong tieng is like—that big of a deal, imagine speaking against that… speak against the gambling. C: I just remember we did the tong tieng for an organization about why they think alcohol and the other vices are so relied on in the community. It’s becoming a much bigger problem as the years go on… it’s not a report, it’s just a framework for the health(?) department, how to outreach to the community and make them come in and learn about getting help, but it’s not a report. But don’t worry about that, we’ll worry about this project. P: I understand. In a way, it’s related now, when we start in the 1980s… we were the victims of this violence. Racial violence. And then because we not accepted, it’s the history of this country that new immigrants coming in become the target of this racial violence. Now that we are here for 40+ years, I don’t want to see us become the perpetrators of this, saying the same crime that we were the victim of back in the 1980s. Meaning that we should be empathetic to new group coming in, we should stand up and support them because we went through the same as they are. and the thing that bugs me the most—i have this irish person come up and say, “hey, when my ancestry came, we were subject to this kind of violence, harassment, just like you cambodians going through right now.” and i say “why do you have to repeat that cycle? You could stand up and we don’t—we’re against this kind of violence because our ancestry were the subject of the similar kind of violence and harassment.” But they don’t, they don’t speak up, and they quietly tell you “oh, I’m sorry, we went through the same thing.” That’s not good enough. Speak up— see something, say something. D, to C: Did you have something you want to ask? C: I wanted to ask more because this project… I also wanted to oral history on maybe your life at another time, and maybe … put it in SEADA, the archive at UMass Lowell. It doesn’t get any… it just… but for this project, I met Dr. Forrant at UMass Lowell, and he spoke with Curtis Chin, the documentarist and author, now he’s on a national book tour. He was—Curtis Chin grew up with Vincent Chin during that time. P: I know Vincent Chin’s story very well. C: Yeah, so he was supposed to go to the wedding, and then … Curtis Chin, we invited him to UMass Boston, and UMass Lowell. He has a documentary called “Vincent Who?” 14 �P: Yeah, I remember that. I read about that because May is the AANAPISI heritage month, and one of the stories is about “Vincent Who?” is Vincent Chin. At the time, Peter Kiang was in charge of the Asian American Resource Center in Chinatown, organizing a rally, things like that. So I know the story really well, about Vincent Chin. He got beaten to death before getting married. In Detroit, they think that he’s Japanese anf the Japanese are responsible for the downfall of the US auto industry. C: And during that time, what do you remember about the reaction, maybe your reaction, and then your community’s reaction to the violence. They didn’t call it anti-Asian racism yet. I knew about the Stockton shooting and other incidents across the U.S., and then there was a Vietnamese uncle in Dorchester, and then there was Vandy. Was there a reaction to the violence at the time, or did people not really know about them? P: I can just speak from the Cambodian community, it seems like number 1, they may not know the whole story because they don’t read the newspapers or watch the news. If they heard something where they worked they would keep quiet. They think, keep yourself low profile so you will not become the victim and avoid speaking up. So, instead of standing up, they back into the shadow. They are cautious about where they go, what they do. They go to work and come home and try to avoid any confrontation. That’s the reaction that Cambodian families would do if they heard of an event like this. Oftentimes, like myself and others who work in the Cambodian community, we are always trying to educate the community. We say look “they are not going to ask you ‘are you Chinese or Japanese’ before they punch you in the face. Because we all look the same.” They call you ‘gook’, they call you ‘chink’, whatever. They not going to ask you “are you Chinese or Vietnamese or Korean” before they beat you up. You happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. During the pandemic, Asian American became the subject to violence—very violent. And the former president is fueling this, pouring the gasoline into this racial hatred towards Asians, saying that it’s the Chinese causing COVID-19. Again, the regular individual can’t tell that we’re not Chinese. You walk down the street, they beat the heck out of you; on TV you saw this. We saw this poor Chinese lady stomped on and kicked on the head in New York, because she’s Asian. She was born and raised in America. People don’t see that. C: Do you feel like it’s gotten worse or better since that time? For me, I wasn’t born yet, I was born in 1993… but it sounds very similar to the climate from the English-Only movement. The English-Only campaign, and immigrant Asians. Do you see it being better or worse? P: The anti-Asian violence, it’s always there. It will rise according to, pretty much national politics. And the politicians who sometimes use that as a way to get elected or stay in power. We have the president of Boston University—John Silber. He ran for governor, and he used Cambodians as a platform to propel him to get elected; fortunately, he wasn’t elected. One of his 15 �speeches he made is why Cambodians are coming to Lowell, and his conclusion is that it is because of the welfare system. It raised a lot of red flags and pushed back various entities and agents in the community. He said that when he was in Lowell for his campaign. And he played that because Lowell back then has the school committee person… C: What year was that when he ran? [Editor’s note: In 1990, Silber won the Democratic gubernatorial primary to become one of two major-party candidates for governor of Massachusetts in the general election of 1990. He lost that election to the Republican William Weld, who won by 38,000 votes.] P: I believe it’s about 1995. You have the school committeeman, Kouloheras, and his partner in crime, also school committeewoman Stoklosa, but the school buildings named after them. So I have this young man reach out to me about that and say “you need to rename the building, not Kouloheras.” I said “I understand. I’m with you, but it’s not the right time or the right place right now.” Remember like… The south banning all the … what you call… D: Confederate Statutes. P: Confederate flags and statues now. If you were to speak before then, they can beat you to death and things like that, but the movement—the time that’s right, it builds on that to do that. In Lowell, they named the school after Stoklosa—Katherine Stoklosa, which is one of the two who were really again—were racist against the Southeast Asian students, who also promoting the English-only language. I remember back when I worked at the bank, one of the cartoons in the Lowell Sun had the statue of liberty lady holding the torch and tablet, “Give me your tired and your poor and your English only.” Perfect cartoon to put on there, and that’s what those people did. They pushed it. The English only movement started off by an Asian American of Japanese descent in California. He started that, and it became big across the country. Back to your question, the anti-Asian violence is still there. But sometimes, it kind of below surface until certain situations, national politic,s get involved, and then create that, and it rises up again. Like COVID-19. The same thing when the auto-industry went down and the Japanese automobile become popular in America in the earl 1990s. It comes and goes—but it’s right there. If you ever saw the commercials about Shingles, Shingles is always there. Wait for the moment until it strikes you. This anti-Asian violence is like Shingles in your body, in society’s body. It’s there and it waits for the time to strike again. In 1990, it was anti-Japanese because the autoindustry in America went down the tubes. They don’t blame management, the company that runs that, they use other excuses for their failure. The Japanese become the victims, Asian Americans become the victims. Then COVID-19 came. It’s the pandemic that’s not just happening in America, but throughout the world. But because politicians use that and put the blame on the Chinese, it’s the Chinese disease brought to America. 16 �C: We were talking about the Stoklosa and the building named after her. We’re also… We’re trying to see what kind of memory the community has about this. Like, Curtis Chin—he’s the one that—he’s always promoting the Vincent story. Everyone’s always promoting it, but stories like Vandy within our community… P: No one talks about it. Not even, I would say 20, 30% of the Cambodians remember this story. C: Do you know people that remember it? P: Yes, besides the parents and the family, the family are the people that remember. And I know the father—the father’s still around. He’s remarried… the sister’s all grown up, and they have kids of their own. She moved to Florida. Those are the family that still remember, and I bet that’s the only family that remember the story. Lowell has shifted dramatically from the wave of refugees coming from camps in Thailand, now Lowell’s Cambodian community are immigrants that come directly from Cambodia to Lowell. They are well-to-do, they come here, they want to do business, they want to be Americans and build home; they are different. They don’t know about the experience that first wave of refugees went through. They don’t know about that. C: Do you think—well, since you know the family and [unknown], do you think that if this story… we wanted to use this story as a reference, and one of the questions Dr. Forrant asked was why—that why did something this horrific disappear in the community? He also wanted to know if there was a commemoration—other than what you said was a fundraising that you did, but thinking… other than what you said about … what’s left of our refugee community, do you think [something about the makeup of the Cambodian community in Lowell: refugees and immigrants]. P: There are a few reasons the story was not remembered widely in the Cambodian community. One, it’s a family tragedy. Remember not long ago, 3, 4 years ago, we have a fire on Branch street that killed about 7 members of one family in the building? And you don’t know what happened, and nobody remembers. Vandy’s story, it’s more of a family tragedy—while Vincent Chin is more of a…well, it’s similar, however, the family is the one that keeps the memories alive. Two, remember as refugees we lost two million Cambodians, killed by their own people, the Khmer Rouge. Like my entire family, wiped out. I’m the only survivor in my family. One death compared to two million. So to them, one death is just like really a drop in the bucket as far as a tragedy that struck the community in our city. That is why it’s not talked about. The other story that you need to also focus on since it’s anti-Asian violence, is Bun Vong. Remember that guy’s story that I told that was grabbed by the neck while he was sitting in his car on Highland Ave in Revere? His name is Somali. He and Bun Vong were good friends. So they decided after settling in Revere, they decided to move to Lowell because they know people here, so they moved to Lowell. One day they went to Revere and there is a club on Revere Beach, they go to visit that in addition to visiting friends. On the way back, they travel through 17 �Revere Beach parkway. For some reason, he was in the middle lane of the three lanes, and his car swerved into the right lane while this other car honked the horn at him, so he would move back to the center lane, and the car that was behind them, pulled behind to the right and these two Cambodians—Somali and Bun Vong get out. Vong was the passenger. He stepped out and without even asking questions, the passenger of the other car punched Vong in the face, he fell backwards, hit his head on the curb, went into a coma and died. With that interaction, these two white guys called them ‘gook’ or whatever because they don’t know that we’re Cambodian, they think that we’re Chinese. He called them all the racial slurs and everything and left. Other passersby called the police, the ambulance took him and the driver, Somali, remembered the license plate and they were able to locate those two guys. The guy that punched Bun Vong in the face, he was discharged not too long before from the military. He went to trial and it’s tied as racial violence against Cambodians. It’s about the same time as the story of Vincent Chin. He was found guilty. Bun Vong’s story is similar to Vincent Chin’s. His wife still lives in Lowell, two daughters—one daughter still, one daughter is very active in the community. I think probably two years old, something like that, when this happened. D: When I was at the conference with Professor Forrant, someone told me about her. I don’t know if you have any information for her because I only have her name. D: What do you think about a marker or memorial at the Pawtucket Canal where Vandy died. Kouloheras has the entire wing of Lowell High named after him abd of course we have the Stokolosa School, but there’s nothing commemorating Vandy. Do you think that it would be something good or that it would offend Vandy’s family? P: I think we would have to go to talk to them first and then get them involved, because it has to do with their family. They may or may not want to have it, so you can’t do it if they don’t want it there. Remember, we talked about your grandmother—you’re so emotional, right? Then, do you want to be remember or be reminded—that’s the kind of thing that we need to be sensitive to. You drive along the highway, you see all the crosses on the side of the highway. And I have my son—one of them driving, the other is going to get their license soon. You always think it could be one of your children—your family, your friend, who had an accident and died, there’s a cross for them. And I’m sure the parent is the one who put the cross there. And I drove—usually I drive by and see it. The Sun has a picture of our benefit at the Boys and Girls club. I’ll look it up, I’ll look it up to see—to send you guys, and then … I will speak with them, and then probably let them know. Maybe give you their contact information—you can also talk with them. D: Yeah, we’ve been struggling to find the family, so that would be really helpful, because since the beginning of this project, we wanted to talk to them, but we just couldn’t find a phone number or anyone else in the community. 18 �P: I’m trying to think. There’s a lot of tragedy that has to do with, you know… just because of who we are. Instead of a focus on one, my thought would be focus on as a whole, if you were to do any statue and remembering people who are the victims and died. We should include all of them. We should have that, because… number one, like I said, others have lost their lives because of who they are. We are mistreated, we are victims of the racial violence, whatever you want to call it. Some died, some survived, but the scars are still there. We should have, if we do anything, really include all of them, the ones who died, the ones still alive—reminder that the hate is still there. Even an elected official like myself, the hate is still there. But because you’re elected, they’re not going to say it in your face; but ,the hate is still there. And you can tell—you can tell, as a person, you can feel it if somebody likes you or not. But because you are elected, they’ll be nice to you. They tell you all glorious stuff, all the fancy words they call you behind the scenes, at their kitchen table, always imagine what they call. What they say about you. That’s not very pretty. And that’s how the children grow up in the hatred family—they hear this at the kitchen table. They hear their parent talk about “Cambodian this,” and “Cambodian that.” So then they go to school, and that’s what they remember, and then they take that a step further physically or by name calling and everything, because they think that because their parents are like that. And they make their parents happy by being against Cambodians, or Asians. C: What should we do to create or remind? I don’t know about if we’ll change the hearts of minds of those people, because we said about that… you know that, the tension and racism is always there, either under the surface or bubbling up, so our fight kind of never ends [P: No] through each generation. What would you do or want to see? Would you like to see any symbol, like Professor Forrant? I don’t know what a marker—I’m Khmer too, I don’t get what the meaning of a marker, but he wants a marker. But what do you like to see as our elder and an advocate from the previous generation, to remind the community or next generation, or even your generation that still walks by? P: I mean, you answer that beginning already about Vincent Chin. Continue to talk about this. Continue to get involved in whatever activity. You continue to educate everyone about the struggle of the Cambodian refugees when they first came to America. Continue to tell the story. The marker is fine, but it would be just another marker among many markers in the city of Lowell when you walk around. Some of them are forgotten, things like that. But the most important is that we are becoming the walking, we are becoming the educators. We took it upon ourselves to educate the community, to the mainstream community about the struggle, about racism and anti-Asian racism, it’s still there. We see what happen to Jewish students. We see what happen to Jewish people, and I always said to myself, what did they do that people always hate the Jewish people? It’s not because what they did, but because of who they are. Asian Americans, it’s just like that. Many, many reasons they hate us. Number one is that, in addition to Cambodians other Southeast Asians came. They say “Oh, they came, they took away our jobs, they become welfare dependent, a burden on society.” All the stuff that they would just 19 �throw at you. That’s how they justify their violence, justify their hate with Asian Americans. And then, in the next step, they say “Oh, Asian Americans are the model minority.” So they say “Oh, look at education institutions—a lot of Asians.” So rather than using as a positive image, they use it as a way to put down Asian Americans. “Oh they don’t need help because they are the model minority. They are all in school, they have a nice car, they have a big house, things like that.” And “Look at them, they dress very nicely, pick on me.” Because they are ignorant. .It’s our job and responsibility to become a walking education institute to teach them. You can teach people many ways, subtle ways, by being always nice to people who hate you, and just be positive. And always present yourself very well. People keep telling me “Oh, you look very well. Nice dress,” everything like that because people will look down on you the way you present yourself. You work hard, you study, so people ask you “How can you afford this?” You tell them politely, nicely, “Oh, I work two jobs. It’s not easy—America is land of opportunity, you can have almost anything, but you can have as long as you’re willing to work hard at it.” You sort of positively reinforce an image that we don’t have everything handed to us—that we have to work hard, that we have to study hard, just like everybody. The short answer is continue to educate the mainstream wherever we are. Just remember that you are the ambassador—you’re not Cambodian, you’re not Chinese, you’re Asian American, so you are the ambassador wherever you go. You have to keep that and always remind of the struggle that Asian American have gone through. D: I don’t think we have anything else. Thank you. 20 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Equal Education in Lowell Research Files, 1970-1990 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970-1990 Description An account of the resource These research files were collected while writing the paper titled <a href="https://scholarworks.umb.edu/iaas_pubs/53/">"The History Matters: Fighting for Equal Education in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1970-1990"</a>, published by the Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.<br /><br />The supplemental materials provided in this collection cover the story of how Southeast Asian and Latino parents in Lowell confronted the Lowell School Committee in the late 1970s and 1980s, demanding that schools be desegregated and that their children have equal education opportunities.<br /><br />Some items are restricted from online publication due to copyright law. Researchers can access these materials upon request. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Forrant, Bob Khoeun, Chandaranee Khuon, Chrisna Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Born digital collection preserved at the Center for Lowell History. Donated by Bob Forrant in May 2025. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted: This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). No Copyright - United States: This item is believed to be a part of the Public Domain under the laws of the United States. Language A language of the resource English Spanish Subject The topic of the resource Public schools School facilities Immigrant students Racism in education Educational equalization Education, bilingual Latin American students Hispanic American high school students South Asian American students Legal briefs Racism against Asians Veterans Public housing Gentrification Immigrants--Housing Education, bilingual School boards School integration Racism against Hispanic Americans Puerto Ricans--United States City council members Social work with immigrants Cambodian Americans Lawyers Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF m4a Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Audio Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lowell (Mass.) Revere (Mass.) Cambridge (Mass.) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Yem, Paul Ratha Perez, Camilo Kiang, Peter Higgins, Jim Gargiulo, Chales Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Paul Ratha Yem Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-05-10 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Khoeun, Chandaranee Khuon, Chrisna Subject The topic of the resource City council members Refugees Social work with immigrants Racism against Asians Cambodian Americans Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Yem, Paul Ratha Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted: This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Revere (Mass.) Lowell (Mass.) https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/37070/archive/files/def2a71fe76f2d4b5b9fe0b1fc787504.pdf?Expires=1784764800&Signature=rnp68T4BDznrnNH2ZgLZ-NASQe7ajwtQ8Ij95FhuL6YYNHilbjaVuK755KdJUG6VBWkMXQJuvH9qrUjlm83LMVYnT5GtVcBBp1ZyiBDXScfzmuppxdKcgtC4vL96EqG00MxantlEyqiewhA5n8WSLK6aqy5%7EOPGQfUxQTD8quaXi3T119T9GejGhOlpsj2bmakOJBHMOrYb7s7-0U%7EeaGn6IuSGgVDOFTp7CsWSEkGHnSmsfwyPUMZ%7EEBUYsScmBeDqPW5pofKGZlYaSeXkbtbUFif6QWlWCO5HLhJCd4gYu8DVbyFWrF58GVfKq%7EDIZ199nZOWhpUiAfKvCO3l1bQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e7dac06f4fe00b9856f0d6e11bd24f6d PDF Text Text Professor Peter Kiang Interview 7.9.2024 Forrant: [00:01:12] Thank you Peter, for agreeing to talk with us. Your articles, we've read several of them as important background and just amazing information for what we're trying to do this. This started several months ago with the idea of doing some research and article about what happened to Vandy. Originally the idea focused on historical memory. And, why in Lowell there's no conversation about the lessons historically, no marker, no anything. Lowell is a city that celebrates its history and memorializes everything. Yet this didn't happen. The more we researched, the more we read, the more we talked to people, it seemed as though what happened was gone. Your work influenced us a lot in thinking about this as a much broader civil rights struggle in the 1980s, particularly around education. Once we started looking at that, we got all the court documents from the parents’ lawsuit in 1987 filed against the school committee and the city of Lowell. As we read through those documents and saw the use of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and Brown v Board of Education, and the 14th Amendment, all embedded in the lawsuit, we realized that this was really important. At the same time as we were thinking about it, two people on the city council decided out of the blue to put forward a motion to abrogate the consent decree and to go back to things the way they were. We said, okay, the timing is right for us to revisit this story and tell it in a more profound way. We're thinking the story goes back to the 1970s, when parents first started pushing the schools to desegregate the school department had its first desegregation plan. We're taking it back to maybe 1975 to 1990. The other thing that we started working on, and I went back from your articles and read a lot of the Globe stories about the violence in East Boston and South Boston and the home invasions and some of the other things that you've documented because we think the Vandy story fits into to all of that. Khuon: [00:05:11] Peter, can you start with briefly explaining who you are, your role in the community at the time in the late 1980s and when much of the turmoil of the anti-Asian racism violence occurred and then any of your work or roles stemming from that period? Kiang: [00:05:37] I come at the question from three distinctive perspectives. Starting in 1980, I was the first full-time staff at the Asian American Resource Workshop in Boston Chinatown. I had just graduated from college and the Asian American Resource Workshop had just formed a year and a half, two years earlier. Very grassroots, the first organization in Chinatown to call itself Asian American rather than Chinese American or Chinese. The idea of pan-Asian unity and solidarity and consciousness were all part of the purpose of that organization. It was intended not to be a social service provider. But more of an organizer, doing things like building pride and consciousness, which is much harder to measure and much more difficult to get funding support for. For a healthy community, it's just a vital part of the process of what I later realized kind of fell under the category of capacity building and community development. My work with the Asian American Resource Workshop, I was on staff there and was probably the most identifiable leader of that organization from 1980 to 1985. That coincided, in part, with �the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees into metro Boston and the waves of violence that resulted from that demographic change both in the city of Boston and in other gateway cities, including Revere. I think because of the pan-Asian mission of the Asian American Resource Workshop, I took very seriously the responsibility to make connections between the Chinatown base and these other populations. Kiang: [00:08} It was easy enough to do that with longer-standing ethnic groups in metro Boston like the Japanese Americans. For the refugee populations, the level of trauma the day-today survival needs and the infrastructure for support, which was through resettlement agencies rather than grassroots community organizations. Those organizations that we’re familiar with today, they didn't exist. It was challenging. In terms of language, culture, history and just the day-to-day realities to build relationships. That was an important part of what I saw the mission specifically to be. We didn't want to simply provide immediate social service. It was taking a longer-term advocacy perspective and a community development perspective. Parenthetically, I'll just add that when I shifted out of the leadership of the AARW it was for the purpose of developing Asian American studies at a local university. Taking some of the same principles of capacity building and community development and consciousness and pride and educational transformation and bringing that into the university setting partly to have a more stable base that was not as vulnerable as a grassroots community organization and in terms of the day-to-day funding realities. But, also to take smart advantage of all the universities that are in the Boston area to figure out some way of having stability and longer-term institutional viability, along with the revolutionary mission of Asian American studies and ethnic Studies. And to be able to have a community-centered model for Asian American studies that would make sense to the community and that would also be able to exist and survive within a university setting. That led a roundabout way to my identifying UMass Boston as the place to do that and to plant roots and build structures to enable that to happen at UMass Boston. That included the early visioning of something like the Institute for Asian American Studies in the mid-1980s. The Institute didn't officially get fully established and approved by the university infrastructure until 1993. The initial proposal for that was something that I developed in the mid-1980s as I was transitioning from the community-specific role into this kind of frontier of organizing within the university. The Vincent Chin killing was in 1982, the court case and the $3,000 fine and probation for the killers was in 1983. The outrage in Boston after the Vincent Chin verdict was pretty strong. I was part of the initial organizing of the local Vincent Chin Support Committee in Boston. That summer of 1983 was also the killing of Anh Mai in Dorchester. And so, the reality of this taking of an Asian life and what was the value of Asian life? And the court case that was going to follow from the killing of Anh Mai and the arrest of the killer, not wanting to have a Vincent Chin case repeat itself in Boston. Kiang: [00:13:20] That all was wrapped up in my work in the Asian American Resource Workshop initiative in establishing something called the Asians for Justice coalition. Although it was a first-degree murder that was a focal point, there were all these other cases happening too. Many of those cases were with Southeast Asian refugee victims briefly referenced earlier. There wasn't really grassroots organizational capacity in those communities to have strong, powerful voices and means of bringing people together in response. Asians for Justice as a coalition �formed with a lot of the responsibility coming out of the Asian American Resource Workshop. That became the mechanism to advocate on behalf of the various communities that were really experiencing this dramatic and devastating cycle of violence that played out in the mid-1980s. I wrote quite a bit and I took seriously the documentation effort for what we were doing while at the same time trying to provide leadership for much of the response from the various communities. Some of the violence was also wrapped up in other aspects of the challenges of refugee resettlement and demographic change. You could see that in the ways the different school districts were responding to the influx of refugee students and family populations and obviously the housing and the employment sectors were also being affected by it. Kiang: [00:15:55] The schools I felt were particularly important. Thematically, I felt that the sacrifices that both refugees and immigrants in general, that they are willing to endure, that there's a rhetoric associated with that and a belief system associated with that, which is we're doing this for the future of our children. When the reality facing the children in their day-to-day experience is kind of thrust against that intended hope from the parents’ generation, then parents get motivated to do something a little bit more than just work hard and struggle silently. Lowell was not the only city or school district where these issues were playing out. I think in part because of META and Camilo and some of the legal aspects and the Latino population in Lowell that was organizing itself a little bit ahead of the Southeast Asians. There was a process playing out in role that I thought was significant. I was always looking for ways of bringing different communities together with shared interests. What META was doing in Lowell, I felt really modeled multilingual equity. The simple act of having these meetings in 4 or 5 different languages, when I would attend some of them, even though they were frustrating in terms of the time involved, the effort and the commitment I felt was just really inspiring and necessary to build real relationships of respect. Kiang: [00:18:31] This would last over time because often coalitions, they form to respond to a crisis. When the crisis is over, then the participants in the coalition go their separate ways. It's more opportunistic politically than anything else. For these communities to have longer-term, longer-lasting relationships of support and understanding and kind of mutual care showing respect through language I felt was a really important part of a process happening in Lowell. It wasn't only the just outrage of a classroom being held in a bathroom, which I saw with my own eyes. I went to some of those sites. I mean, that was outrageous, without a doubt, but it was actually the response of the parents making the effort to communicate with each other that made the story and the process really powerful and just not deserving of, but valuable to support and to document. I felt my role was partly to share some organizing energy and also very much to document. That was maybe the combined roles that I felt I was playing in terms of the ARW and Asians for Justice work and my interest in Asian American studies and the classroom and curriculum building over time that I think my career overall has represented and that our program has been good at doing for over three decades now. Forrant: [00:20:45] Out of curiosity, as you were starting an academic role, did at any point you get pushback from the university, like, why are you out there doing those things? Or, you're jeopardizing tenure. I'm just wondering if you got encouragement or pushback institutionally �Kiang: [00:21:22] As a separate part of this story, when I was studying the landscape of options for what institution to try to go into and then to literally organize with this purpose in mind, UMass Boston really stood out as a place where that could be done with a critical mass of not necessarily Asian American faculty. Paul Watanabe was here, but there was a critical mass of community-minded progressive faculty overall within UMass Boston and the demographics of the UMass Boston student body. They were just so relevant to community realities. There's a direct overlap. There was an institute before the Institute for Asian American Studies existed. There was an institute established by Vietnam veterans called the Joiner Center, and that had every element of what I thought a powerful Asian American studies program should have in terms of advocacy, curriculum, teaching, research, service, etc. with a distinctive constituency. At that time, Massachusetts Vietnam veterans were a significant political force. There was a flow of resources and there was political clarity, I would say, and quite a bit of influence that the Joiner Center leveraged. Kiang: [00:23:19] The Joiner Center's mission was in short wrapped up around the consequences of the Vietnam War and the legacies of the war. Their core constituency were veterans. When I learned, in a deep way about what the Joiner Center's mission was and structure and activities were, were focused around, I realized that you could argue that Southeast Asian refugees are a parallel constituency, a core constituency for the Joiner Center in terms of legacies and consequences of the Vietnam War. The directors of the Joiner Center hadn't thought about it like that when they first got things going. They were open to that idea. The Joiner Center became the first base to sponsor and fund the Asian American Studies courses that I developed. It was really through their advocacy within the university that I was able to do a lot of stuff in those first few years. I paid attention to my own tenure case to make sure my teaching, my research, my publications could meet the traditional stuff. It was all being done in this really holistic, community-centered way. And I thank the Joiner Center for having essentially sponsored much of that in the first 3 or 4 years. That was kind of unusual and very special. I always give great appreciation to these two populations, the Southeast Asian refugees and the Vietnam veterans, who were both students in the initial Asian American studies classes. The emotional and inspirational and educational power of those populations being together in the same classrooms doing Asian American Studies work was really special. That gave our program academically, this kind of core foundation in being grounded in refugee realities and in all the Southeast Asian American stuff that we've been able to do all these years. It's very, very different from every other Asian American Studies academic unit in the country that was more coming out of second-generation identity and representation stuff. For us, it was refugees and veterans who were the beginning, the foundation for what we were doing. So very, very different. Thanks for asking that question. Kiang: [00:26:51] Going back to Lowell, the killing of Bun Vong (8.4.1985) was after the killing of Anh Mai (7.24.1983). Those two outrageous incidents were very much linked together in my mind or in the analysis of Asians for Justice. The Bun Vong story was very much linked to Lowell, although the killing itself was not in the city. (Editor note: Vong, age 35 from Lowell, was beaten in Medford by a white motorist and died a few days later.) The awareness of the �contradiction of surviving genocide and being killed through road rage or racist violence. Even now I'm so angry. Then similarly, by 1985, 1986 the arson in Revere and the assaults in Revere were just really terrible, really hard to take. Particularly with the Cambodian population and the survival legacy that they physically represented being here in metro Boston. I think before the Lowell work really became the focus of some of my attention, it was these cases that preceded it that were already very much, prioritized as examples that needed intervention and organizing and advocacy and also needed documentation, future teaching and education. Later on, to build on what I was saying earlier about the multilingual power of META work with the parents in Lowell, the multicultural education training and advocacy (META). That was the legal services group that Camilo was part of. The English-only push in Massachusetts was the competing narrative of that period. Kouloharas (Editor: chair of Lowell School Committee) was an obvious protagonist in that world. But English only, and the eventual 1992 statewide referendum to eliminate bilingual education in Massachusetts, all of that was going on through this period and the groundwork being laid politically on that side for all of that policy change, in addition to the arbitrariness of “speak English you are in America now,” kind of on the street. Forrant: [00:31:10] We've been trying to find more about the history of the national Englishonly movement. Did you ever find a direct link between them and what was going on in Lowell? I mean, I know ideologically they were connected. Was there that kind of an organizing principle in Lowell connected to this bigger organization? Kiang: [00:31:54] Not that I can tell you. I don't think that anyone ever tried to follow money flow or individual visits or this or that would show that kind of evidence. For certain the Lowell English-only referendum predates the statewide by a couple of years. The money flow and the political leadership for the statewide one didn't seem to have any of the local protagonists in prominent speaking or endorsing kind of influencer roles. Forrant: [00:32:57] I've been trying to read everything that Kouloharas said to see if he, even in passing, said something about this larger movement. I haven't found it. I was living in Holyoke while a lot of this was happening, and there was a big English-only movement in Holyoke. A guy ran for mayor on a platform of English only. I'm wondering if these communities across Massachusetts, like Holyoke and Lowell kind of connected. Kiang: [00:33:42] I'm assuming that they are there, but how well organized it was. Maybe there was an infrastructure that was there that was quickly tapped. We were just too busy to monitor it. Forrant: [00:33:59] They had money because in the Holyoke newspaper, they had this five-part series of full-page ads about how Puerto Ricans don't care about their kids. And why are they all sitting on their front steps smoking cigarettes and just these incredible caricatures. And that was expensive. Somewhere there was money. I forgot that the statewide one happened in 1991. What was the result? Kiang: [00:34:50] Statewide the voters eliminated bilingual education and a generation and a half lost access to home language, heritage language. And it wasn't until 2017 that the �Massachusetts legislature essentially repealed what had been passed by ballot referendum. The opportunity to have different models of bilingual education in Massachusetts schools returns in 2018. That's a long period of bilingual ed being illegal. Kiang: [00:35:53] In some ways, the success of Cambodians electorally in Lowell is unprecedented. There's no other city in the United States that can claim the level and spread of electoral Cambodian American representation politically, that that the city of Lowell and the state legislative districts can claim. I mean, that's I think, equally a legacy if you want to frame it in terms of him. Interesting. That's giving him too much credit, maybe. Khuon: [00:36:50] How did you first learn about parents advocating for their children's education and the School committee's opposition? Kiang: [00:37:05] I think I more or less covered this earlier. Partly it had to do with Asians for Justice and the cases of racial violence, the Vong case and its relationship to the emergence of Lowell as an important location for Cambodian secondary migration. And the work of META, which I was familiar with because of their work in Lynn and other places closer to Boston. And the whole relationship of bilingual education, racial desegregation, etc. in the Boston Public schools. That was something that I knew pretty well. The parallel of the challenges in Lowell around those issues with this particular population in a post resettlement post-genocide reality of racial violence; Lowell was the place I did care about, even though it was not my community or not so easy to in a day to day way be involved. I was paying attention. Khuon: [00:38:35] Could you give us an overview of the tensions that you were paying attention to at the time or did you pay attention in retrospect? Kiang: [00:38:45] It was the racial violence first and foremost, which was not simply in Lowell. It was the reality in Revere, which was much closer to Boston. And the Revere population had direct connection to East Boston and to Allston. The original Cambodians in Boston were in Allston and then in East Boston. There was the spillover into Revere and it was not simply Cambodian. It was Lao and Hmong and it was ethnic Chinese from Vietnam who were being targeted also. It was the Anh Mai killing in July 1985. (Editor’s note: Anh Mai, 23, and Vietnamese, was killed in Dorchester. Police said the homicide was the 14th crime against Asian immigrants reported in the city so far that year. They said there has been an increase in reports of vandalism, harassment, fire-bombings, and assault, adding many incidents “have probably gone unreported.”) It was definitely racist dynamics playing out. They were predictable dynamics. That was what was so frustrating from our perspective because, and this was a connection to Asian American studies, because if you know Asian American history, then you know that there are waves and cycles of violence that are associated with economics and with other larger forces that are playing out. The depiction of Asians as enemies through war and the way that translates into those same populations being targeted. All of that was explainable and predictable. If you knew Asian American studies, as it was playing out in real life, the frustrations of seeing that happen, knowing that it shouldn't happen, was a part of my thinking and my perspective. Every kind of new example, new case that came up was in part a sense of outrage and frustration and also reenforcing the importance of doing this kind of work to educate the public, to educate the �communities, to build stronger community-based organizations and build capacity to stop it, to prevent it from happening. Kiang: [00:41:24] Both in the short term, which meant dealing with civil rights laws and prosecutions and having critical mass show up in the courtroom for different cases. There's very specific things case by case, and then there's longer-term stuff which had to deal with. We had a curriculum project with the schools in Chelmsford. We couldn't get into the city of Lowell, but Chelmsford was interested in having curriculum K-12 curriculum expansion to understand Southeast Asian refugee resettlement and the connection to Asian American history. The school superintendent in Chelmsford contracted the Asian American Resource Workshop to work with teachers over a maybe a year and a half period to design a curriculum and to do teacher training. It's the same Merrimack Valley geography and the same refugee flows that are coming into the region. The contrast between Chelmsford Public Schools and Lowell Public Schools was striking. We felt like we wanted to be dealing with Lowell directly but couldn't and therefore we went the route of Chelmsford to show that it was possible. That's not something that I've written about or talked about, but that was part of the reality in terms of the region and thinking about these tensions and the dynamic. Khuon: [00:42:59] What year was that? Kiang: [00:43:01] That's mid-1980s. Khuon: [00:44:14] In our research, we found that many people from the community have a hard time remembering Vandy. Do you think there is a reason for his death to not have a deeper impact on the community? Kiang: [00:44:34] This was the most interesting question of these from my perspective. I'm hoping that whatever you produced out of this work provides some perspective to respond to this question. I don't know if there are his siblings are still in Lowell and the parents and extended family experience following his death or the temple that his family was a part of. At least in the immediate weeks after the killing the temple was where the family was seeking support. I never had the feeling that the family wanted to pursue anything more aggressively. Khoeun: [00:45:58] I checked with the family. Not any of the siblings, but I believe one of the nieces or one of the daughters of one of the siblings. She mentioned that she didn't know she had another uncle because I mentioned you're two uncles, Davey and Vandy, but there's also Vandy. Do you know anything about him? She said that she was completely unaware. Which was an interesting thing because it tells me that did the family just stopped talking about it after some point? I assume there are no pictures or any sort of memorial in their house for him. I also just can't get in contact with the family in general, because she fell out of contact with them. That's all I know after talking with them directly. Kiang: [00:46:56] I think if the family chose to handle it that way from the beginning, then that's the explanation. The killing of Bun Vong, his daughter is now an adult who is seeking her own clarity and desire for justice. It's a different way of relating to the specific losses of that time. And I think also perhaps to some extent the fact that the aggressor was from a prominent white family is another aspect of the story that is not looking to memorialize the victim. I think it's �understandable. This gets into I still think about this now with the Anh Mai case, and after 40 plus years, I'm taking another take on it, which I'm pursuing more actively. After Anh Mai was killed, the stance of the beginning Vietnamese community in Boston was to not raise too much fuss about it. And he didn't have any family members who were here with him. He was an unaccompanied minor. I'm going to include this in an article that I'm working on about the case and the Anh Mai legacy. Just a week or so ago was the anniversary of the killing of Vincent Chin. In Boston’s Chinatown there was a commemoration. It was small, but it happened. I appreciate that I went to it to document it, but there's just no memory of Anh Mai at all, even in the vibrant very, very civically engaged, robust Vietnamese community of today, there's no memory at all. There's no marker, there's no nothing. Your question about Vandy is in the same realm of why? And is that right? And do we, some of us who were there at the time and for later generations for educational purposes, if nothing else? There's not a family that's asking for justice or memorialization. It's more from an educational and political and community perspective that this is a memory that should not be forgotten collectively. When we decided to take on the organizing in the aftermath of Anh Mai's being killed, and the Vietnamese community itself was saying, no, they're not going to get involved with that. Kiang: [00:51:02] That was a difficult challenge, personally. If the Vietnamese community is not going to take the leadership role, what? Who am I to say that we will or that I should, and so I struggled with that a lot. Ultimately, I decided for myself anyway, that it wasn't simply that he was targeted for being Vietnamese. It was a racial killing. And from that perspective, a broader Asian American community could also be engaged and invoked in the process. It didn't have to be, strictly speaking, a Vietnamese thing, although we made every effort to have open communication and dialogue with what was a very early-growth Vietnamese community at that point. I think even now I have floated the idea and I'm still going to pursue it, that there should be a memorial to Anh Mai in Boston, in Dorchester. Should there be more public recognition of this killing in Lowell and this young life lost? Forrant: [00:52:29] The thing that gets me about Lowell is the two people that you could think of in Lowell as creating the climate that promoted what happened are Kouloheras and Stoklosa the chair and vice chair of the school committee. Kouloheras has his name on the wing of the high school and Stoklosa within a couple of blocks of where this happened, has her name splashed on the side of a school. That's part of what we're thinking about. There's some people that have been in Lowell at least talking, this was before we started doing this, about trying to get the Kouloheras name off the school. One of the things that I teach a lot in history classes with my students is what happens when memory gets erased. What happens when in an archive nothing about something like this is collected? What happens when people are invisible? And this feels like one of those stories. Right? We also share your concern about, what if the family doesn't want it. We've already backed away from thinking we want something about him per se, because that's not clearly what the family is saying they want. �Kiang: [00:55:24] Raising this in whatever way you do spills quickly into all those other contemporary debates about curriculum and monuments. You know, who's an American? If I were a part of the local community knowing what I know part of me would still be pushing hard for the K-12 curriculum and specific curriculum units focusing on this period, of the crucial period of the 1980s, 1990s, in terms of the formation of the community, and then lessons of the sacrifices, struggles, and accomplishments of the community since then. Drawing on the elected officials. Although they are pretty impressive in terms of the number of them, their relationships with each other are complicated. Getting them all in the same room to support the same effort or initiative takes some smart organizing and relational sophistication, I would say. To have something public, whether it's a marker or in the curriculum or a retrospective in the Lowell Sun that goes back into this with a contemporary spin, a bunch of different ways of ensuring that that it's not lost or buried or hidden. I think there's a bunch of different ways of, of doing it. Some can be wrapped together with contemporary recognition and others of it is just being honest in terms of what factually happened. That's where I think someone like Bun Vong’s daughter, there's a direct lineage of impact. I don't know exactly how she articulates what she wishes were possible today for the city. She would be one person that I would certainly really talk with. What is she willing to say and help to convene in terms of a civic and educational process? Forrant: [00:59:42] Lowell is coming up on its 200th anniversary. There's a way to think about this being one in a series of things that would be part of looking at this long history of immigrant and refugee settlement in Lowell. Other stories that can be excavated about what's happened to various African communities as they’ve settled in Lowell. I like the idea of a forum or something where we could bring together some of the actors that are still around from the 1980s, some of the people in the parents’ group that filed the lawsuit, we've been reaching out to identify. The tricky thing with the lawsuit is that most of the names don't have the last name because their kids were the plaintiffs, not the adults. I have some friends in the community who are looking at the names and trying to figure out who their parents might have been. The university was very involved with all of this. Some of the faculty were involved in trying to create a human rights commission at the time in Lowell. And there were all these meetings that Charlie Gargiulo talked to us about last week where there were faculty that were trying to do stuff. There were even faculty that rode school buses. At the university, there's nothing in the university record about any of this. That seems maybe a more fruitful initial place, possibly to push that the university should sponsor a forum or conversation through the Asian American Studies program at UMass Lowell. Kiang: [01:03:51] We could think about doing something together in terms of the current context. There's no doubt that the wave of violence of the 1980s was more intense, more deadly. You've obviously I'm sure made this case already, but the anti-Asian or the Asian hate dynamics of Covid brought all of this into view, referenceable in people's immediate memory. Before that gets totally blurry again for the public, completely lost in terms of the consciousness and the historical memory and the active teaching of lessons that could have informed what happened in 2022. �Forrant: [01:05:02] I started from your articles, Peter. making a timeline of the ones that you've mentioned and then I did some more digging. It just it dawned on me as I was doing it, when I teach civil rights history, I don't teach about this. Now I'm going to. But, why after 29 years of teaching? It is shameful that I wasn't aware of these things. How do we impact the curriculum? I'm certainly going to, in my US history classes on civil rights, discuss this rather than talk about busing in Boston, I'm going to talk about school desegregation and law. Because the kids are going to have more relatability to me talking to them about that than about Southie. Kiang: [01:06:26] Likewise, in the teacher education program, being able to influence what the teachers are being trained to teach in social studies out of the UMass Lowell School of Education. This component can be readily incorporated. You can help shape that in terms of content. And then, with a little bit of will and political influence from senior faculty in the School of Education, it shouldn't be that hard to do. And then it can be celebrated, as part of the 200th anniversary. Relevant, responsible, historically accurate teaching and the special contributions to equity that the university is making. Khoeun: [01:07:45] I think one more question. Actually. It just popped up. When we were interviewing Mr. Perez, he talked about how in the 1980s there was a massive during that period in general, there was a massive repeal of civil rights and whatnot and how that era seems to be connected to now. I was wondering if you agree with him or if you think there's a reason for that because he mentioned it; he is still looking into it. I was wondering if you had any insight on that? Kiang: [01:08:33] The economic recession of the 1980s was bad. The rise of what was then a much more conservative political ideology with Republican Party rule. Honestly, that platform looks good right now, relatively speaking. Challenges to the 1960s civil rights legislation and policy areas, in the backlash to affirmative action and the concept of reverse racism emerged during that period. So, it's one generation removed from 1965. The fundamental real equality that's internalized by the country hadn't played out. It wasn't in the culture, it wasn't in the school curriculum. People pick sides of being winners and losers with law and policy, and the losers resent and eventually will try to win. Khuon: [01:10:21] I'm still dissatisfied with our Vandy situation. I feel like it is hard to figure out a situation where we can highlight him properly, especially with the predicament we're in that his family's not very vocal. Kiang: [01:10:49] I don't see any ethical way around it in a history, social science kind of way. An alternative route is to do something more through creative expression. So, poetry or letting your imagination work in a creative process. Show something of not just the circumstances of the killing, but the life before and the life that could have been. Turn to the creative world rather than being confined by the limitations of history, social sciences, of fact-based stuff; because you won't be able to get beyond that. Khuon: [01:11:49] Thank you. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Equal Education in Lowell Research Files, 1970-1990 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970-1990 Description An account of the resource These research files were collected while writing the paper titled <a href="https://scholarworks.umb.edu/iaas_pubs/53/">"The History Matters: Fighting for Equal Education in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1970-1990"</a>, published by the Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.<br /><br />The supplemental materials provided in this collection cover the story of how Southeast Asian and Latino parents in Lowell confronted the Lowell School Committee in the late 1970s and 1980s, demanding that schools be desegregated and that their children have equal education opportunities.<br /><br />Some items are restricted from online publication due to copyright law. Researchers can access these materials upon request. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Forrant, Bob Khoeun, Chandaranee Khuon, Chrisna Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Born digital collection preserved at the Center for Lowell History. Donated by Bob Forrant in May 2025. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted: This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). No Copyright - United States: This item is believed to be a part of the Public Domain under the laws of the United States. Language A language of the resource English Spanish Subject The topic of the resource Public schools School facilities Immigrant students Racism in education Educational equalization Education, bilingual Latin American students Hispanic American high school students South Asian American students Legal briefs Racism against Asians Veterans Public housing Gentrification Immigrants--Housing Education, bilingual School boards School integration Racism against Hispanic Americans Puerto Ricans--United States City council members Social work with immigrants Cambodian Americans Lawyers Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF m4a Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Audio Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lowell (Mass.) Revere (Mass.) Cambridge (Mass.) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Yem, Paul Ratha Perez, Camilo Kiang, Peter Higgins, Jim Gargiulo, Chales Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Peter Kiang Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-07-09 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Forrant, Robert Khuon, Chrisna Subject The topic of the resource Racism against Asians Refugees Racism in education Education, bilingual Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kiang, Peter Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted: This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lowell (Mass.) Asian American Resource Workshop https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/37070/archive/files/fec0d0a32a4165115f44507f99d41c14.pdf?Expires=1784764800&Signature=u64%7ETuibmKx5od4%7EYsLYOWvPPi1u-wAtluxbVPa3bEeicb%7EZH%7E7VFObaJ4AntcrT5lds5MAkRj3CLzzgnXPfjl9xLdJZdP9AJbKdZMaBBctyxn2lMvt%7EJ0BqQZyR8S6yQRKx1XITLWcRLxIgW0oQhlwdz3EflZVIABAnAvROJIsngz8-LPmAsNRfIYO1CDW48eKKcAQVrrJIepQQLxiQOgSkGhg5uhjyRn1972ekbUP7msH7gvLkz75tz81DgT%7ECAagiRYZJv2GLRI6CfEH6FSRbmk0GiOsi63I2jQ%7EYLroLUT6YU2lZO4QxyZmX2kt9Ajm4CQZDCos6InsHGA%7ENxg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 774ff8a986ba873e3571b1405eeaeb05 PDF Text Text � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Center for Asian American Studies. Collection, 2017-Ongoing Description An account of the resource -------------------- SEADA would like to thank the following individuals for their work in making this collection available online: Monita Chea. Relation A related resource The <a href="https://libguides.uml.edu/uml11" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">draft finding aid</a>. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Photograph of Southeast Asian Digital Archive public launch event, 2018-12-04 Subject The topic of the resource Color photography Southeast Asian Americans--Massachusetts--Archives Description An account of the resource Photograph of attendees listening to Chancellor Jacqueline Moloney speak during the Southeast Asian Digital Archive (SEADA) public launch on December 4, 2018. The event took place at University of Massachusetts Lowell's O'Leary Library Mezzanine.  Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Khuon, Chrisna Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Center for Asian American Studies Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Massachusetts Lowell Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-12-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource UMass Lowell Library makes this material available for private, educational, and research use. It is the responsibility of the user to secure any needed permissions from rightsholders, for uses such as commercial reproductions of copyrighted works. Contact host institution for more information.  Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource 1 photograph; image/jpg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context IMG_4732.HEIC Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Lowell, Massachusetts 2010-2019 Digital photography O'Leary Library Photographs