R2W 2008: Day 5 - Polynesian Praxis

This morning, we packed into the vans and drove out to San Francisco for our first community crawl - the Sunnydale Housing Projects. Gaynor, Ursula, Bro, and Tina of AIGA1 walked us down the hill and told stories of living through turf wars, daily random shootings, cops, and redevelopment.

But if we had only focused on the violence, we would have missed the point. Gaynor, Ursula, Bro, and Tina grew up in Sunnydale, made it out, and went to college -- Ursula went to Sacramento City College and eventually graduated from UCLA. But they always planned to bring it back to their community... and return they did -- with a passion! Is it possible to be a working class person of color activist/community organizer?! Do Polynesian activists exist?Yes! Gaynor, Ursula, Bro, and Tina are living testaments to this fact.

We finished out the day with Polynesian Power. Five strong Polynesian community leaders joined us for a conversation about their faith and their social justice work: Elaine Howard, the first Pacific Islander to work at Global Fund for Women; Fatai, the founder of the Tongan Youth Parliament; Cimone, a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz; Fuifuilupe Niumetolu, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley; and Mo, a labor union organizer.

Elaine talked about being one of only 2 Polynesians in her class of 600 at UC Berkeley and then being a young unmarried woman with power in Tonga: "They didn't know what to do with me!"

Fatai talked about the challenges of starting a youth parliament in Tonga to voice youth concerns to the government and asked us what we thought of the idea of having a youth parliament in the U.S.

Cimone threw herself into academics to try to understand the challenging of gender roles in her Samoan culture and is now a Ph.D. student at UC Santa Cruz.

Fuifuilupe, who is currently a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, shared that she was kicked out of school and excommunicated from her family for standing up for what was right because she was a Tongan woman: "To have faith, to believe in peace... is a dangerous thing... My faith was not in any particular institution - it was in Christ."

Mo, an immigration and labor activist, encouraged us to do right by our actions and support women - something that he is motivated by his faith to do - "When Jesus was being crucified, all the disciples denied him, but three women stuck with him until the end."

It was a wonderfully inspiring day of witnessing Polynesians doing praxis - theory and action to change the world.

- Lauren Q., R2W Program Associate