FREE
6 p.m.: Reception
7 p.m.: Program
See the historic heart of Little Tokyo—First Street North—through the eyes of artists and activists. Join us for a performance and the screening of two short documentaries about Little Tokyo’s resilient history of fighting displacement and why many call it home, including the West Coast premiere screening of Ken Honjo and Kuniharu Yoshida’s First Street North and Visual Communications’ 1970s: The Fight for Little Tokyo which recalls the redevelopment struggle and the fight for housing, services, equal pay, and the future of Little Tokyo through the accounts of Evelyn Yoshimura, Mark Masoka, David Monkawa, and Lucien Kubo.
The screening will be followed by an inter-generational panel of community organizers discussing Little Tokyo’s history of art and activism, which continue to this day through the fight for First Street North. The panelists are musician June Kuramoto (Hiroshima); photographer, director, community activist, and MANO YA co-owner Zen Sekizawa; +LAB Artist in Residence Amy Sanchez Arteaga of Cog•nate Collective; and nationally known community organizer activist and teaching artist Curlydynamite.
Join us in the lobby after the program to take your art into action with calligraphy with Japanese calligrapher and hip-hop dancer Kuniharu Yoshida and letter writing with multi-disciplinary artist, writer, actor, arts educator, and community organizer traci kato-kiriyama.
Learn how you can join the movement to stop the erasure of Little Tokyo and sustain our historic Japantown for future generations!
This program is presented in conjunction with At First Light: The Dawning of Asian Pacific America. It is free, but RSVPs are recommended. For more information about this program, please visit vcmedia.org/atfirstsite.
