REMEMBERING YING LEE
By David Bacon
The Nation – 9/21/22
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/remembering-ying-lee/
https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2022/09/remembering-ying-lee.html
Chinese American community leader Ying Lee Kelley, former Berkeley City Council member, School Board member and longtime assistant to Congressman Ron Dellums.
I took a walk when the pandemic started with Ying Lee, who died this week. I took these two photographs of her, and she talked about her memories of her childhood in China. Then we laughed at how we defied the Berkeley School Board.
Ying’s father came from China to the U.S. as a secretary in one of the tongs in the late 30s, leaving Ying, her mom and siblings behind. A harrowing flight from the invading Japanese army took them from Shanghai to Chungking, and finally landed them in San Francisco after the war.
When I was at Berkeley High School in the early 60s Ying was a teacher. Berkeley High already had Young Democrats and Young Republicans Clubs, so we organized a Young Socialist club with her son Paul and another friend, David Laub. Ying was our sponsor.
Ying Lee at a demonstration with grassroots people and political activists from the Occupy Oakland movement, marching through the city in November 2011.
As if that wasn’t enough to get her in trouble, we invited a Communist to speak at the school, a move quickly prohibited by the principal. Although the school board overruled him, he got his revenge.
Ying was married to John Kelley, a renowned math professor at UC Berkeley, fired in the McCarthyite hysteria for refusing to sign a loyalty oath (a move later ruled unconstitutional). When Kelley had a year’s sabbatical in India, and Ying asked for a leave to go with him, the school administration forced her to quit instead.
Ying never lacked for courage. She ran for city council in 1973, and became Berkeley’s first (and only) Asian American council member. She fought to build left politics that now seem normal for Berkeley. Few remember that through the 50s and the early 60s the city had a very rightwing government. The East Bay routinely elected extreme conservatives.
Ying helped to break that stranglehold, and then went to work for Congressman Ron Dellums, who called for Henry Kissinger to be tried for war crimes during the Vietnam War (or the American War, as the Vietnamese call it). Ying fought our fights, and was arrested in many of them, from saving the downtown Berkeley post office to protecting BLM demonstrators in the streets. She sat in the Occupy tents at Oakland City Hall.
THE REALITY CHECK – David Bacon blog
http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
Other Books by David Bacon – Otros Libros
The Right to Stay Home: How US Policy Drives Mexican Migration (Beacon Press, 2013)
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2328
Illegal People — How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
https://www.cornellpress.
cornell.edu/book/
9780801473074/communities-without-borders/#bookTabs=1
The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/
9780520244726/the-children-of-nafta
En Español:
EL DERECHO A QUEDARSE EN CASA (Critica – Planeta de Libros)
http://www.planetadelibros.
com.mx/el-derecho-a-quedarse-en-casa-libro-205607.html
HIJOS DE LIBRE COMERCIA (El Viejo Topo)
http://www.tienda.elviejotopo.
com/prestashop/capitalismo/
1080-hijos-del-libre-comercio-
deslocalizaciones-y-precariedad-9788496356368.html
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org and http://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com
and https://www.flickr.com/photos/56646659@N05/albums
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