"The struggle for Freedom, Justice, and Equality transcends racial and ethnic barriers."

Richard Aoki was a social activist: field marshal in the Black Panther Party, founding member of the Asian American Political Alliance, leader in the Third World Liberation Front Strike at UC Berkeley, coordinator for the first Asian American Studies program at UC Berkeley. He dedicated his life to human rights. Aoki demonstrates that the fight for social justice is a collective effort, regardless of cultural or racial barriers.

Richard Aoki: Valedictorian & Lumpen (In His Younger Years)

One of the things that seems to be odd is that, here I am. I’m a Japanese American. This is an African American based organization. So meeting there the first night of the founding, Huey asked me to join the Party. I looked at him and I looked at Bobby and I said, “I know you two guys are crazy, ‘cuz we drafted the program together. Are you blind as well? I’m not Black.” Then Huey responded by saying, “That’s not the issue, Richard. The struggle for Freedom, Justice, and Equality transcends racial and ethnic barriers. As far as I’m concerned, you Black.”

In fact at one point I had the title of being the “toughest Oriental to come out of West Oakland.”

At first I looked over the other majors: rejected psychology for their subjective approach to the problems of the world, and philosophy as nothing but thought, mental masturbation. Political science, I couldn’t deal with that at Berkeley, because at the time the Poly-Sci department at Berkeley was politically conservative. In fact some of the professors worked for the CIA and that was public knowledge.

Credits to thefuckingloudestazns.tumblr.com