This being human is a guest house/Every morning a new arrival/A joy, a depression, a meanness,/ some momentary awareness comes/ as an unexpected visitor./Welcome and entertain them all!/Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,/who violently sweep your house/Empty of its furniture,/Still, treat each guest honorably./ He may be clearing you out/ for some new delight./The dark thought, the shame, the malice,/ meet them at the door laughing,/ and invite them in./Be grateful for whoever comes/ because each has been sent/ as a guide from beyond.
Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi
I have heard of Glenn Omatsu as one of UCLA’s formidable editors in the early 1990’s. When he gets hold of an essay, it turns into readable prose, teaching others the illuminating insights that has yet to be realized, years after. When he edited my piece on “Holding a Pigeon in My Hand: How Community Organizing Succeeds or Falters, ”an essay that is now part of a textbook, asian americans: the Movement and the MOMENT, he underscored, “I have been organizing around a central theme, certainly not known to me then, but clearer to me now: a commitment to finding strengths in people, motivating them to do the right thing for greater good of the community, and encouraging them to invest in a future of justice, equality and inclusion for everyone.” That was 2001.
Fast forward to April 30, 2014, and the LA Times headline is: “BANNED FOR LIFE: Clippers Owner Donald Sterling is fined $2.5 million; commissioner [Adam Silver] says he’ll press for a sale of the team. Discipline is swift for ‘deeply offensive and harmful’ comments.”
Contrast that sweeping backlash for a public figure’s racism, divided no more, we are repairing and healing.
Healing from the Past and Moving Past Racism
It was quite healing to hear Provost Harry Hellenbrand when he acknowledged a crowd of over 200+, gathered in the heat of Northridge afternoon high 90’s temperature, that the Glenn Omatsu house is fitting tribute to Glenn Omatsu’s unselfish mentoring of students, of repairing what was done in the past, so we can move together to seize the future. He was not sure as we move forward that the example of Glenn Omatsu can be matched.
Past refers to 3200 Japanese Americans who lived once in what is now CSUN campus. They farmed the land, and were falsely suspected of being the enemy. They lost their land and property. When they returned after their internment, they found their farms were destroyed and they took on new jobs and silence became a way of moving on.
Ron Muranaka, a farm owner of 50 years of growing flowers, recalls living in converted horsestalls, because their land and property were taken from them. The new Porter Elementary School in Chatsworth was once their farmland, that was also taken away from them.
For the Native Americans, the Tatvian people, much of Cahuenga hills, Tujunga, Encino, Pacoima, were formerly Indian tribal lands. When the first Mayor of Los Angeles, Thomas Foster, took office, he also took the lands from the Indians by paying a measly $16 property tax. Much of the Indian names remain like Pacoima, Cahuenga, Tujunga. Even the land where Universal Studios sit on was once Indian lands.
The Asian House becoming Glenn Omatsu House
In CSUN, whether you are Black, Latino, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, White, gay or transgender, or any religion, you can count on Prof. Omatsu’s heart, intellect and wisdom, to be a welcoming space, a soulful home to seek wisdom from, but mostly to realize your own innate strengths.
Kokoro, a heart, a “feel for what matters, “ was a novel by Natsume Soseki, read by Glenn at age 17yo. Kokoro describes Prof. Omatsu, for those folks who have worked with him, in many grassroots frontline struggles, as in: to unionize the New Otani Hotel in Little Tokyo, the 11 Chinese residents who sought redress and reparation from Kajima Corporation for WWII atrocities, the campaign to stop sweatshop slavery of the Thai and Latino immigrant workers illegally housed in El Monte, attacks to dismantle affirmative action like the Bakke decision, efforts of Rafu Shimpo newspaper to fire employees and destroy the English section, and opposing the first Middle East war.
Prof. Omatsu practiced solidarity, in finding America’s heart in those frontline struggles, to include those in the margins and the underprivileged, through dialogues and by asking more questions.
As he was shaped by Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, Philip Vera Cruz, K.W. Lee, Yuji Ichioka, Mo Nishida and Russell Leong, even relatively unknown individuals, 60 of them he listed in his essay on “Listening to the Small Voice Speaking the Truth,” which included Kathy and Mark Masaoka and this writer. He was keenly aware he was being raised by a village of community-centered hearts, including his mentors: Ho Nguyen, Kazu and Tak Iiijima, and Clarence Spear.
From Ho Nguyen, Prof. Omatsu learned militant humility. Militant to ask questions of authority, yet, humble to transform oneself, while transforming the world.
By practicing militant humility, students can help transform education’s mission, by asking who benefits, will it focus on indigenous, which faculty will be involved, will it represent voices from communities not heard from, will education benefit and become an opportunity for the next generations to come? These are strategic questions of consequences, to review one’s decisions for impact and influence.
Distinguished lecture and dedication on April 27 and 29
CSUN’s Jushin Taiko opened the ceremony on April 27, with their thunderous beats on the drums, stick grips in unison, their sculpted arms revealed by their X-back clothing and conscious positions onstage, drummed three powerful pieces, and a resounding theme of “We will learn together, Together, We are One Solid Force.”
So when Prof. Omatsu distinguished lecture was delivered, his reflections were crisply formulated from decades of helping the dispossessed, the marginalized, and those treated unfairly: “Asian American Studies belong to the students and the communities. It does not belong to the faculty and the institutions!”
It was an iron-clad conclusion, that justice belongs to all Americans and a reflection gained from meeting folks in power, engaging on issues of civil rights and community empowerment, and what is essential. “Be subversive and be willing to act based on righteousness.” It is not self-righteousness, but a collective sense of what is for the common good of the college students.
Gregory Pancho, a Filipino American, received the Donna Kawamoto Special Achievement Award. He dropped out for 9 months to care for his mother with cancer and in honor of his mother, “My mother is my special circumstance. She is my motivation, I accept this award on her behalf.” He thanked the Asian American faculty at CSUN for the emotional support he got and now, after his Bachelor’s, he will be taking his Master’s in Asian American Studies at SFSU.
Another Filipina –American awardee, Chelley Quiambao, received the Enrique de la Cruz Social Justice Award, who was recognized for her work in community empowerment and her contributions to the struggle for social justice. She accepted the award from the former Dept. Chair of Asian American Studies, Enrique de la Cruz who came. She said, “My mom instilled in me the value of higher education.” Chelley has been accepted to Lesley University on a full scholarship and will be teaching, as she pursues a Master’s Degree in Education.
The Taiko Drums sounded like uproars to the heavens, to the spirits of the ancestors of the place, to the spirits of those who have gone before, who have left legacies of serving others, yet now embodied, in full being in solidarity, in Prof. Omatsu.
He takes in their sorrows and their depressions, and turns them around
Professor Rashitta Brown-Elize, a former EOP student (Equal Opportunities Program at CSUN, for low income and underperforming students) and now EOP and AAS Professor, she gave a moving account of almost dropping out of CSUN in her first year. She worked two jobs to support her biological family, while going to college. When she got hospitalized, she realized her family could go on without her. That lesson was not lost to her and she worked on a life’s balance. She now has a Bachelor’s, a Master’s and is finishing a doctorate at USC. She credits Prof. Omatsu’s perseverance in realizing her potential, hidden from her at that time. When she got married two years ago, she asked Prof. Omatsu to walk her down the aisle, a fitting tribute to “being my Surrogate Dad who saw the goodness in me.” She gave him a framed wedding picture, an endearing show of “microaffections”, a word popularized by Prof. Omatsu during his lecture.
Rev. Alfred Tsuyuki did a purification ceremony, a rendition of Amatsu Norito prayer, a sacred prayer of recitation, calling on The Founder, The Principal Parent, and the Founder’s blessings to reside here in the campus of CSUN, here in the Glenn Omatsu house. His prayers called on human beings to cater ourselves in gratitude, for in gratitude, grace and blessings pour out. He emphasized a clear kokoro, as one develops vision and insights with a clean heart, a pure spirit, based on a single trait of sincerity. When he dispersed the rice paper confetti, it miraculously moved as if pieces had gained legs towards the perimeter, where most of the EOP students were gathered, and then, moved back into a funnel of energy, a vortex carrying the confetti into a cluster which moved as one force of energy towards the administrators and the VIPs shaded in the tent.
At the dedication of the Glenn Omatsu house at 230pm on April 29, two convergences were noted, the end of the Vietnam War, and the April 29 civil riots in Koreatown and South Central in Los Angeles. The weather forecast was in the upper 90’s. Yet, strong winds threatened to blow down the tent, which was dwarfed by the overflowing crowd of 200+, too small to contain the enthusiasm and gratitude of those who came: Japanese American businessmen, Native Americans, students, faculty, CSUN Provost, CSUN dean, and community folks, Filipino Americans Student Association.