Past Ties: Archiving Student Activism with Pacific Ties
Student publications have remained an important pillar of a vibrant college community, creating spaces where marginalized communities can document their experiences and organize politically. Established at UCLA in 1977, Pacific Ties is the oldest student-run Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) newsmagazine in the country. However, despite its historical significance, many students today remain unfamiliar with the publication and its contributions to APIDA advocacy. This lack of awareness reflects a broader issue, as the concerns of the APIDA community have historically been underrepresented in traditional media, limiting understanding and awareness of the social and political issues they face. As such, Pacific Ties was created to give voice to the APIDA community, serving as a paper by and for marginalized voices.
Given the ephemeral nature of student journalism, with issues and materials at risk of being lost over time, archival work becomes crucial in maintaining these records and ensuring that their stories remain accessible. Todd Honma, an Asian American Studies professor at Pitzer College, emphasizes the importance of preserving community-based media, noting that zine archives help to “preserve this ephemeral form of material culture” and create “new pathways for learning about marginalized histories by increasing accessibility to these once obscure documents” (Honma, 2016). Similarly, the pioneer Asian American publication Gidra sought to challenge stereotypes and encourage political expression within the community, demonstrating the importance of independent media in documenting the Asian American Movement (AAM). Nguyen and Gasman state that publications like Gidra helped “stimulate and inspire members of the Asian American community to vocalize their feelings or thoughts”, in contradiction to negative stereotypes portraying Asian Americans as passive and apolitical (Nguyen & Gasman, 2015). In these contexts, preserving publications such as Pacific Ties allows readers to access firsthand accounts of APIDA student activism, gaining a better understanding of the historical conditions that shaped it.
Through the preservation of these voices, the digital archive of Pacific Ties demonstrates the historical and political significance of APIDA student activism. By spotlighting the publication’s first issue, the archive documents the lived experiences of APIDA youth in 1978, contextualizes historical issues that remain relevant to the community today and highlights the effectiveness of collective action and solidarity within and beyond the APIDA community. Together, these artifacts illustrate how student journalism served as a platform for advocacy, community building, and political engagement.
The digital archive of the Pacific Ties publication increases visibility of the lived experiences of ADIPA youth in 1978, allowing future generations to connect and relate to past generations. Other Asian American student publications, like the Gidra, serve as a prime example of such impact of digitization. The Gidra was also a student-run newspaper that originated at UCLA but began prior to Pacific Ties in 1969. The influential publication included personal narratives that reflected the ideas, feelings, and experiences of Asian American youth. In 2015, the online Densho Archives worked with Mike Murase, one of the founders of the Gidra, to publish a digital archive of the entire publication from 1969 to 1974. Honma describes that the digitization of the Gidra provides “a way for students who come from these communities to see themselves in the archive and to empower themselves as shapers of history” (Honma, 2016). Hence, archiving historical publications that document the lives of marginalized and underrepresented communities helps bridge the gap between the past and the present.
In a similar fashion, the archive of Pacific Ties’s first issue allows the ADIPA youth today to learn about and connect with the experiences of their community in 1978, specifically through the articles that feature personal stories. In the archive, the “Poem” by June Lagmay highlights the tension between assimilation and cultural identity experienced by APIDA youth. The speaker in the poem transitions from experiencing internalized pressure to conform to idealized American beauty standards to reclaiming cultural pride. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker describes with vivid imagery how she alters her physical appearance by styling her hair and makeup to look more “American” and like “Barbie faces.” Her hair and facial features become a symbol of generational identity that she feels pressured to erase. The poem also reveals the racialized and sexualized stereotypes of Asian American women when the speaker describes how she is perceived as a “toy” and fetishized as “exotic.” Toward the middle of the poem, there is a dramatic shift toward a reconnection with her cultural heritage. She sees her ancestors as “fierce warrior women” on scroll paintings and expresses admiration for their “bold gashes in broad fearless faces” and how “their gait is proud, their glance arrogant.” The speaker is inspired by the confidence and cultural authenticity depicted through their refusal to change their appearance. At the end of the poem, the speaker acknowledges the emotional toll of assimilation and declares that Americans “could never know the humiliation / Of the years of trying to be like you.” The speaker concludes “I will eat with chopsticks / I will eat balls of rice. / I let my hair hang straight as it pleases” to express deliberate acts of resistance. The powerful ending signifies the rejection of assimilation and the self-acceptance of their culture. Lagmay’s poem captures the authentic, emotional realities of the APIDA identity in 1978, ultimately reminding readers today that identity formation and resistance have long been part of Asian American history. Alison Piepmeier, director of Women’s and Gender Studies and associate professor of English at the College of Charleston, emphasizes how “zines instigate intimate, affectionate connections between their creators and readers” (Piepmeier, 2008). Future generations of APIDA youth can read the Pacific Ties archive to understand that the struggles of conforming to beauty standards and cultural stereotyping are not new, but instead have been recognized and documented by young writers decades ago. By preserving and digitizing works like the poem in Pacific Ties, the archive ensures that APIDA youth can learn from and relate to those who came before them.
Pacific Ties also helps provide valuable historical context for political issues that continue to shape the APIDA community today. The emergence of student publications like Gidra and Pacific Ties is inextricable from the broader history of the AAM and the fight for ethnic studies programs in the late 1960s and 1970s. Karen Ishizuka, Senior Curator at the Japanese American National Museum, explains that the campaign for ethnic studies gave way to the AAM with Asian American students “among the leaders of the Third World Strike at San Francisco State College, the longest college strike in U.S. history” (Ishizuka, 2015). This wave of activism led to the political environment from which student publications emerged to empower students to share their perspectives on issues of race, education, and representation.
One prominent issue that remains widely debated within the APIDA community is affirmative action, particularly following the landmark case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). Allan Bakke, a white man, argued his rejections were based solely on race as his qualifications exceeded those of the minority students admitted in his application years; the court ruled racial quotas in university admissions were unconstitutional, though race could be used among other factors in admissions. A featured article in the archive, “BAKKE: An Asian Perspective” by John Ohashi, criticizes the court’s reasoning behind its ruling, arguing that its “antiseptic treatment of race as merely a fact of ‘superficial physiology’…is to indirectly deny the existence of racism in American society”. In framing race as a biological characteristic rather than a societal construct, the decision minimizes the systemic nature of discrimination. Further, Ohashi argues that the court’s view of special admissions as a threat to the idealized “melting pot” of American society implies that any efforts to support marginalized communities “will always miss their objective should a minority group not wish to become an ingredient in the ‘melting pot’” by resisting assimilation efforts and maintaining their cultural identity. At the same time, the article acknowledges that the perspectives within the APIDA community were not monolithic, noting that Asian Americans must actively shape their own ideological responses to dominant social narratives.
Discourse surrounding affirmative action continued with the landmark case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2015), which argued that admission practices violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally discriminating against Asian American applicants. The court ruled that race-based admissions programs were unconstitutional, effectively ending affirmative action in higher education. One response to the case highlights how the case “did not counter negative action against Asian Americans…instead it vilified affirmative action”, as the argument that admissions processes discriminate against Asian Americans “relies on stereotypes about Asian Americans’ widespread academic and socioeconomic success in the United States” (Moses, Maeda, & Paguyo, 2019). This case illustrates how Asian Americans continue to be positioned within debates about affirmative action, with the use of the model minority stereotype in the students’ argument complicating how the APIDA community engages as they must reconsider their own role in upholding racial hegemony. By documenting early discussions of affirmative action and racial representation, the article in Pacific Ties reveals how APIDA students were already faced with complex questions about race, identity and solidarity. As an archival artifact, the article situates APIDA activism within a broader political context and reveals issues that have continued to impact those within and beyond the community.
A significant tenet of the purpose of Pacific Ties and Gidra is the message that experiences of the APIDA community extend beyond racial lines, revealing how racial solidarity is crucial to combat racism and anti-imperialism. A review of Gidra highlights how minority groups during the Civil Rights Movement realized the power of their collective voices to organize around political issues, where the concept of an Asian American identity was formed, primarily to reject the Eurocentric and hegemonic term “Oriental”, clarifying the necessity of radicality in claiming the Asian American identity, as well as for those who fought alongside them” (Lopez, 2011).
Pan-ethnic identities became more present by the 1960s, when Asians in the United States had experienced a multitude of instances of institutionalized racism and persecution, calling upon engaged youth to take action across college campuses (Lopez, 2011). Similar to Pacific Ties, Gidra was founded by students at UCLA and, as one of the first Asian American radical newspapers, invited students to vocalize their feelings and thoughts, catching the attention of various ethnic enclaves to have their experiences highlighted. Gidra also coordinated social efforts on a broader level. The article “Asians support Panthers” in the May 1970 issue of Gidra highlights the parallels between the efforts of the Vietnamese people and Black Panther party in self-determination in Vietnam and in the United States respectively, ending with how all “Asian Americans and members of the Third World are called upon to seek an end to the repression of the Black Panther Party…and to preserve peace throughout the land” (Gidra, 1970). This work underscores the importance of covering not just internal relations of Asian Americans, but using the traction garnered by the publication over the first couple of years of its run to uplift communities that provided solidarity in the past and develop relationships with new communities. Gidra’s legacy will serve to be one of the most influential publications during the early 1970s, being a platform of solidarity and advocacy.The Pacific Ties archive, Past Ties, serves as more than a collection of digitized documents; it brings forth the realities of APIDA students bridging past and present experiences. Making student journalism accessible made it possible to highlight the intimacy and emotions of June Lagmay’s poem. Providing a platform for analyses like John Ohashi’s of the Bakke decision introduces readers to essential context for community discourse, similar to Gidra, demonstrating that APIDA advocacy has always been intertwined with larger social struggles for racial justice, cementing the concept of solidarity as crucial for progress. This archive allows for a glimpse into the history of the APIDA community on a smaller scale, such that past student activists are featured, empowering future generations as well as allies to connect with each other to continue shaping a more representative future.