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A majority of API Equality-LA’s work is done through each of our all-volunteer committees. API Equality-LA wouldn’t be the leading API LGBT organization that it is today without the contributions of all of our volunteer activists. Most of that work happens without any reward. To recognize stellar volunteer activists, the media & website committee selects a monthly Activist of the Month. We feature them on our website by asking them to answer a few questions, some serious and some fun. Get to know some of the incredible people that devote their time and effort to advancing API Equality-LA’s mission.We’re proud to present Marissa Kitazawa as our April 2012 Activist of the Month!

Kitazawa is a graduate of Pitzer College with a B.A. in Media Studies and Economics. Her Media Studies thesis was based on the power of community and oral history. She created a documentary about her Grandmother’s experience during WWII, specifically her survival of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. As a fourth generation Japanese American, Kitazawa feels it is important to continue to educate the youth about history and activism as tools for social teaching.

At Pitzer College, Kitazawa was active in the Asian Pacific Islander (API) community and led workshops and open forum discussions to create dialogue among her peers. She held several leadership positions in the API community and was the Head Sponsor in the Asian American Sponsor program for three years and the co-founder of the Asian Pacific American Coalition. It was a combination of her education and community engagement that inspired her to pursue a career in the API community.

Since graduating, Kitazawa has been working at the JACL – PSW for the past year serving as a Program Associate for the Community and Cultural Program. She has coordinated several of the PSW District programs: Camp Musubi, Youth CAN and the Collegiate Japanese American Internship.

She also produced and directed JACL’s Passing Down the Legacy documentary. This documentary follows the Bridging Communities program and explores how the Japanese American and American Muslim communities have used two traumatic historical events to create a proactive program for change. The film highlights the power of cross-cultural collaboration in forging a more compassionate future.

She is excited to continue and expand her work at JACL.

Floyd Mori, National Executive Director of the JACL, stated: 

We are happy to have Marissa serve as the Associate Regional Director for the Pacific Southwest District. Her experience will be valuable to the JACL in continuing the programs in PSW.

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The video documents the Bridging Communities Program conducted in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, which brought Asian American and American Muslim high school students together to learn with and from one another.

The video, which was directed and produced by Marissa Kitazawa and Alex Margolin, takes viewers to Manzanar, Tule Lake and Minidoka and captures some of the highlights and lessons experienced by the students as they walked the grounds where former incarcerees were once confined.

The goal of the Bridging Communities Program is to engage youth in activities that support community preservation and development and to participate in-service learning projects coordinated with former confinement sites. The Bridging Communities Program and video are funded through a grant from the National Park Service, Preservation of Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program.

For a preview of “Passing Down the Legacy,” go to http://vimeo.com/30837824.

Kitazawa is a program associate for cultural and community programs in the JACL Pacific Southwest District and was contracted by National JACL to document the program.

Margolin, contracted by National JACL to coordinate the Bridging Communities Program, was the JACL program associate for education and interpretation programs. She provided oversight of the Bridging Communtiies Program and three JACL district program interns: Yuka Ogino of the Pacific Southwest District, Jessica Kyo of the Northern California-Western Nevada-Pacific District, and Mackenzie Walker of the Pacific Northwest District.

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 By Christine McFadden, Pacific Citizen Correspondent 

Shehzaib Rahim, a Muslim American freshman at El Camino Community College was living in Chicago on Sept. 11, 2001. About to turn nine, he still remembers how his family members reacted around him.

“Many people were moving out of the city,” said Rahim. “The fear was that exactly what happened back then would happen today,” he said of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

Two years ago, Rahim applied and was accepted to the “Bridging Communities” cross-cultural learning program in Los Angeles. The JACL program takes high school students from both the Muslim American community and JA community (as well as other communities) and engages them in interactive, educational sessions with topics ranging from identity to civil rights. Students also make a pilgrimage to the site of a former World War II JA incarceration camp.
Rahim enjoyed the program so much that he returned for a second year as an adviser, learning in depth about the ties between the Muslim American experience post-9/11 and the JAs post-Pearl Harbor.

“I’m honestly so grateful that the JAs came to our aid,” he said. “They knew exactly what it was like. I know a lot of different JA organizations were trying to support Muslim Americans and back us up. I’m so grateful for people like that.”

This December, a short documentary on the program will be released. Titled “Passing Down the Legacy,” it follows the Bridging Communities program in its three different cities of operation — Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles — and documents the experiences of students like Rahim.

Directed and produced by Alex Margolin, former JACL Pacific Southwest District program associate of education and interpretation programs, and Marissa Kitazawa, program associate for PSW JACL’s cultural and community programs, the documentary fulfills a historical component requirement of the National Park Service grant that previously funded the program.

However, both describe the film as accomplishing much more. “I think the main goal for Marissa and myself was to give voice to the students who went through the program,” said Margolin, a San Fernando Valley native who is half Korean American and Russian. “We’re making the film, but it’s not about us. It’s their voice and their story.”

According to Kitazawa, a Yonsei or fourth generation JA from Los Angeles, the Bridging Communities story had great documentary potential. “We just kept talking about how this program and this story would make a great film,” said Kitazawa. “How two seemingly different communities can come together and bridge … We thought that if we were able to create a film, we’d be able to share that with the rest of the world.”

Kitazawa and Margolin met while attending Pitzer College in Southern California. Kitazawa who studied media studies and documentary filmmaking, graduated in 2010. Margolin studied history and graduated in 2009. The two co-founded the Asian Pacific American Coalition at Pitzer in 2009.

The documentary follows the three different programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, as they make pilgrimages to Manzanar, Tule Lake and Minidoka respectively. It also focuses on the history of the program and what the youth have gained from it.

It can also be a kind of example for other communities of color to build coalitions and work together,

said Kitazawa.

Bridging Communities began as a collaboration between three different community groups: PSW JACL, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress (NCRR). This year, Bridging Communities also received sponsorship from the Tule Lake Pilgrimage Committee.

Kitazawa calls the pilgrimages the “turning point” for the students. “That’s kind of when the hammer hits the nail on the head — this is exactly where injustice took place,” she said.

Zawar Jafri, who participated in Bridging Communities Los Angeles in 2010 and came back in 2011 as an alumnus, cites his interactions with former JA internees as among his most significant lessons learned.

“It’s one thing to read of their experiences in history books and another to hear of their hardships and difficulties firsthand,” Jafri said. “I did not expect their words to penetrate me or touch my heart as much as they did.”
Rahim’s interest in civil rights grew. He now wants to go to law school — an interest he says was mainly based from his participation in Bridging Communities.” Program participants were not only impacted by the pilgrimages, but were also influenced on a grander scale.

Jafri says that the program changed his life path “by helping instill or augment the weakened pride in my ethnicity and religion after 9/11.”

Kitazawa and Margolin hope the program’s youth empowerment is captured on film.

These students are able to gain the toolkit and the skills needed to become activists and to be able to speak out on issues that they feel passionate about

Following a protest in Yorba Linda, Calif. earlier this year, one JA Bridging Communities student spoke in defense of Muslim Americans at a fundraising event for the Islamic Circle of North America Relief USA.

“For me, that’s kind of the purpose of the program — for the youth to understand that they have a voice and be able to apply it in real life,” said Kathy Masaoka, co-chair of NCRR and co-founder of Bridging Communities Los Angeles.

Masaoka hopes the documentary will also be a recruitment tool and potentially generate new ideas for similar programs in other cities.

“If any of that came out of this film, it would be more than we’d ever expected,” said Margolin.

Because Bridging Communities did not receive the National Park Service grant this year, program officials are hopeful the documentary will become a successful fundraiser.

“I think now more than ever Bridging Communities is really trying to find the funding in order to sustain the program … that’s one part of what we’re hoping that this documentary will do,” said Kitazawa.

Jafri is looking to the documentary to share with others about the life-changing experience he had with Bridging Communities.

“My experience with the program was very profound, and the fact that this documentary could provide a glimpse of the lessons learned to the many people that view it is something I am very happy about,” he said.