Section 2: Solidarity
The second section of the exhibition consists of protest photographs depicting acts of solidarity. Crucial to CAAAV’s mission to seek racial, gender, and economic justice for Asian communities has been allyship with other marginalized communities within and outside of New York City. While CAAAV’s membership consists largely of Asian immigrants and refugees, many of their organizing efforts have focused on uniting different community-based constituencies that are affected by the same systemic issues—including police brutality, war, workers rights, and discriminatory laws that target poor and working class people of color.
In 1992, CAAAV convened the multiracial coalition People of Color Against State Violence, which gathered in NYC to protest police brutality just days after the acquittal of the police officers who assaulted Rodney King. Many of these photographs reflect CAAAV’s continuous efforts to unite Black and Asian American communities in their fight to break down the barriers of racism and demand viable opportunities for their peers. CAAAV’s participation in the anti-war movement has also involved allyship with other marginalized groups, as seen in the photographs of protests against Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
The solidarity expressed through these public demonstrations calls attention to the collective power of communities of color in America. Many of the signs in these photographs take the form of large banners, held aloft by multiple people together, reflecting the collective effort required to fight systemic discrimination and violence.
Again and again, CAAAV has called upon its members to acknowledge and expose the complex interactions of race, class, and immigration status at play within marginalized communities—these archival photographs allow us to reflect on this ongoing work.
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Protest banner against police brutality, c. 1994–1995. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
In this photograph, protesters in Columbus Park in Manhattan’s Chinatown have raised a large banner that voices their opposition to police brutality against communities of color. Alongside an image of a pig in a police hat—referencing a long-standing derogatory name for police—is a well-understood symbol of solidarity: the raised fist.
The image of a clenched, raised fist is universally known to express solidarity, strength, and resistance, but it’s closely associated with the fight against systemic racism—specifically, the Black Power movement. With its clear symbolic resonance, the raised fist acts as a clear signal to fellow protestors, community members, and police officers of the demonstrators’ unified stance against racism and state violence.
One individual holding the banner aloft also holds a sign about Prop 187, which was a controversial proposition on the 1994 general election ballot in California. The proposition denied all government benefits to immigrants who could not prove citizenship, legal residency, or temporary status. CAAAV was vocally supportive of affected immigrants in California and encouraged community members to work for the defeat of Prop 187 and similar measures that treated immigrants as scapegoats for the country’s economic troubles.
CAAAV leading a protest against racial inequality, undated. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
Racism Is Used To Divide the People of Color!, July 30,1993. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
Ebony and Ivory Live Together in Bipolarity, Genocide Of All Asians Is The Stark Reality, July 30, 1993. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
Man protesting for racial solidarity, July 30, 1993. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
People stand behind a memorial, September 4, 2002. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
This photograph, depicting a memorial display at an anti-war press event, ties together the exhibition’s two broad themes of memorialization and solidarity. White, Black, and Asian community members stand behind the memorial commemorating those lost in war, which is decorated with signs that voice opposition to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The press conference seen here was organized by Third World Within, a coalition of grassroots people-of-color-led organizations in NYC, and was meant to highlight experiences of immigrant communities since the events of 9/11. CAAAV was a member of TWW and a vocal opponent of both the war on Iraq and the Israeli occupation.
Such public displays elevated the racial dimensions of war and forced the media to spotlight the oppression and violence suffered by “third world” communities, both in the U.S. and abroad—topics that are too often under-reported by the media.
“If today we were to look for a flashpoint for blind military aggression against civilians, or a for a full-scale program of apartheid and colonization, we need not look any further than the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
— The Voice, Vol. 12 No. 1, Spring 2003
Protest in support of Palestine, April 20, 2002. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
Has American Gone Mad?, c. 2002. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
"No Displacement," April 20, 2002. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
In this image, members of CAAAV’s Chinatown Justice Project (originally founded as the Racial Justice Project) hold a large banner as they protest in solidarity with Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In the spring of 2002, Third World Within organized a delegation to participate in the March Against the War in Washington D.C. CAAAV joined allies in D.C. to protest the U.S.-led war on terrorism and the siege on Palestinian communities. This protest banner combines the colors of the Chinese and Palestinian flags, indicating that CAAAV members, who were fighting state violence in Chinatown, and Palestinians faced a common fight and held a common interest.
The CJP was a community association of Chinatown residents that aimed to protect the neighborhood from gentrification and displacement of low-income residents. The group eventually became the Chinatown Tenants Union, which is an existing hallmark of CAAAV’s efforts to build people power and protect affordable housing in NYC.
Girl wearing JUSTICE vest, April 20, 2002. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
Solidarity protest against New York City's gentrification, undated. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
Asian for Mumia, September 14, 1996. Photograph. CAAAV Digital Archive
Mumia Abu Jamal was a former member of the Black Panther Party who was wrongfully convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1982.