Affective resistance fails in the Asian American context – only mobilizing LEGAL CHANGE can solve – it ASSUMES the chang evidence because short term defeats are key to long term success!

IV. THE POLITICS OF RIGHTS: LEARNING FROM THE ASIAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE It is tempting to draw from my comments so far a fairly cynical view of law and rights. In short, law and rights simply reflect contests over power, at any moment just registering the ongoing trench war over who gets what and, specifically, who is included and excluded from full protection by the legal agents of dominant groups. I think there is much truth in such a skeptical view, but I also think it is simplistic. Framing struggles over power, position, and interest as claims of rights can impart a historically grounded ethical dimension to struggle. This framework can then open the possibility for changing relationships of power, in part by mobilizing the official legal establishment, but even more by potentially mobilizing citizens and organizations in civil society who stand up to challenge either the abuses of rights or the uses of rights to justify abuse, as in these two historical cases. Rights are words, often written on paper, but they become materially powerful when people, ordinary and extraordinary, invest in them meaning and faith through action to challenge the unjust and often arbitrary practices of dominant groups through and beyond states. And that is just the message preached and exemplified by Gordon Hirabayashi: rights must be mobilized and demanded routinely for them to matter in guiding governmental and social power. “As fine a document as the Constitution is,” Gordon Hirabayashi famously told a reporter, “it is nothing but a scrap of paper if citizens are not willing to defend it.”23 Such mobilization of rights in the cause of justice is hardly easy or natural, however, and Gordon’s legacy exemplifies what the struggle takes. For one thing, rights mobilization requires personal virtues of courage and willingness to make personal sacrifices. Gordon displayed such selfless bravery in his refusal to accept the order of internment, a defiant challenge to the illegitimate government denial of basic rights to him and other Japanese Americans. In waging his campaigns against criminalizing subjugation, he also had to resist the pressures of others in his community who discouraged “rocking the boat” and making a bad situation worse by challenging government injustice. Gordon made a “lonely stand” in his initial resistance.24 Young Filipino American activists in the 1970s, including Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes, displayed that same type of independent courage and persistence in the face of many obstacles and dangers. Indeed, they not only challenged powerful corporations and the American legal establishment that protected their unjust practices, but the young activists boldly opposed a dictator (who declared martial law) as well as his elite supporters in the American government.25 The young reformers also persisted when other workers, especially senior manongs, 26 were wary about defiant challenges to the status quo. Gordon was willing to go to prison; Gene and Silme lost their lives to assassins. Defiant action to demand rights can be risky business, and often requires such commitment and willingness to make sacrifices for larger causes. Personal courage and persistence alone are rarely sufficient. Struggles for rights also require organizational support, financial resources, and allied experts, usually including cause-oriented lawyers. Indeed, struggles for rights typically require movements that enlist many forms of organized support. The struggle for the ruling on coram nobis and legislated reparations during the 1980s, in particular, illustrates the important role of committed lawyers, community mobilization, and organizational alliance, both within and beyond the Japanese American communities. The Filipino Americans workers who initially fought for citizenship and workplace organizing rights, and later for workplace justice and democracy in the Philippines, likewise understood the political imperative to build a movement within the union, as well as within the broader Filipino community and beyond, including among diverse progressive organizations. Finally, each of these legacies illustrates that struggles for rights must be willing to go beyond exclusive reliance on litigation to produce change. In each campaign, efforts to mobilize media support, to influence public opinion, and to lobby members of government, the business community, and the academy were critical to success. Struggles over rights are most productive when they can convince dominant groups that it is both a matter of public principle and in the political interest of the majority, including the dominant group, to do the right thing.27 As Gordon put it, “I never look at my case as just my own, or just as a Japanese American case. It is an American case, with principles that affect the fundamental human rights of all Americans,” and, I might add, all peoples.28 One tragedy of the campaigns by Silme Domingo, Gene Viernes, and their allies was that their aspiration to advance rights in the workplace for all minority and female workers found only limited success in winning over the mass public and, especially, dominant elites. In particular, the workers’ campaign linking civil rights to social rights and human rights—what eventually came to be called a “Third Reconstruction”—gained little traction. In this regard, however, it is notable that Gordon Hirabayashi also became an advocate for “human rights,” finding both more expansive substantive grounds for justice and potential leveraging power in internationally accepted conventions. All of these activists understood that advances in egalitarian justice and social rights entail a slow, uneven process in which short-term defeats or failures still serve the larger cause of keeping democratic visions alive and inspiring future generations to continue the struggle.29 These are the lessons regarding how rights have mattered for Asian American groups who have been marginalized, excluded, and oppressed in American history. Rights guarantee nothing, but in some historical circumstances they can be a useful resource for building a politics of legal mobilization that includes, but usually transcends, mere litigation and reliance on courts. We can learn a great deal from these courageous actors no longer with us—from Gordon Hirabayashi, and from Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes. Struggles for rights can make a huge difference for many people. These three individuals were giants whose struggles must be remembered, an enduring inspiration for all seeking human rights and social justice.