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Harvey Dong's "A Bookstore for Everybody" also appears in this volume, page 122.
INTRODUCTION
Forty years have passed since the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) strikes for ethnic studies. When San Francisco State College (SFSC) students went on strike for a third world studies curriculum, students such as myself at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), were moved to call on our classmates to support them. We believed then that the best way to express our solidarity was to fight for the very same demands and principles at UC Berkeley. That way another front would be opened that would diminish the repression of the SF State strikers. The strikes left their mark on both campuses and especially changed how history was being taught.
The Third World Liberation Strikes that occurred in 1968-69 at SFSC and UCB had profound effects on the history of Chinese in America. First, the strikes won civil rights changes in higher education-the institution of ethnic studies curricula and programs. This new approach enabled the study of Chinese American history in a comparative context that was focused on looking at racial discrimination and the struggle for equality. Second, the strike movements caused a significant shift in the mind-set of many Chinese American college-aged youth in the San Francisco Bay Area. The post-World War II path toward acculturation into mainstream society from the urban Chinatowns was replaced by another calling. Instead of working only for professional self-advancement, many Chinese American college students turned their attention toward fighting institutionalized racism on their campuses and oppression within the Chinese American community. Not only was the study of American history revolutionized, the struggle for ethnic studies became part of a revolutionary movement.
International events in the late sixties provided an important backdrop for the rise of Asian American activism. Revolutions in the third world, the rise of Black Power protests, and institutional racism in the educational system, which took the form of erasure of Asian Americans in history and society, led many Asian American activists to become more resolved in their involvement. There was strong identification with the struggles for independence in former colonies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; internal colonialism was a dominant paradigm for activists who saw themselves as part of an oppressed...