Announcements

August, 2020

 

The Minidoka Pilgrimage Committee fully supports the Black Lives Matter movement and calls to end racist state and societal inequity. 

 

During World War II, Japanese American families were torn apart, our lives uprooted, our homes and communities broken by the institutions that were supposed to protect us. This history is not isolated. Since before the inception of the United States, Black, Brown, and Indigenous people have suffered these same injustices and worse.

 

Our mission is to educate all people about the history of the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans. Furthermore, we strive to provide space to heal from the intergenerational trauma caused by forced displacement. We recognize that in order for this work to have integrity, we must:

 

• Boldly speak out against injustices that are still a reality for many

• Meaningfully increase our support of Black, Brown and Indigenous communities in their ongoing struggle for civil rights

• Push back against anti-Blackness and the Model Minority myth within the Japanese American community 

 

We are also introducing these actions at our organization:

 

• Intentional outreach to recruit a broader range of student scholarship candidates, with a focus on Black, Brown and Indigenous youth.

• Training, facilitation, coalition work, speaker recruitment and more as tactics to name and address anti-Blackness in our programming and provide an intentionally anti-racist lens.

• Developing ways to make Minidoka Pilgrimage programming more accessible to people outside the Japanese American community

• Committing to anti-racism and unsettling anti-Blackness as ongoing, long-term work

 

To this end, the Minidoka Pilgrimage Committee supports the demands of King County Equity Now, a coalition of over 30 Black-led or Black-allied community-led organizations.

 

We stand with the victims of police brutality and their families, we stand with those calling for justice, and we pledge concrete action to do better by our neighbors and community members most impacted by racist violence.

 

Black Lives Matter.