“Uniting with Other Communities to Keep Democracy Alive” is the theme of the 2021 Los Angeles Day of Remembrance (DOR), to be released on YouTube at 2 p.m. PST on Saturday, Feb. 13.
The pre-recorded video will be available on the Manzanar Committee’s YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/manzanarcommittee.
The Day of Remembrance is held annually to commemorate President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, which resulted in the unjust incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans and their immigrant parents in American concentration camps and other confinement sites during World War II.
The 2021 DOR program will feature:
• Mario Perez, immigrant justice fellow at the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice;
• Dr. Curtiss Takada Rooks, program coordinator of Asian Pacific American Studies and assistant professor, Loyola Marymount University;
• Mariko Fujimoto Rooks, a senior at Yale University, where she double-majors in the history of science, medicine, and public health and ethnicity, race, and migration, and is enrolled in the combined BA/MPH program at the Yale School of Public Health.
“NCRR looks forward to breaking out of the draining state of frustration and distress from 2020, arising from the COVID pandemic and assaults on racial justice and overall democracy,” said Richard Katsuda, co-chair, Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress. “In 2021, we must refocus our eyes on the prize toward building alliances with other communities to push for racial reckoning and justice for Black Americans as well as amnesty and humane treatment for Latinx and other immigrants being unjustly detained.”
“The Manzanar Committee believes DOR is more important than ever, in light of the violent insurrection that took place on Jan. 6,” said Manzanar Committee Co-Chair Bruce Embrey. “DOR tells our story, a cautionary one, about what can happen when racism, economic greed and a failure to uphold our Constitution is allowed to take hold in our country.
“DOR has been vital to our community’s efforts to hold our country accountable for its racist and undemocratic practices. DOR today should be a forum where we demand those who advocate insurrection against our democracy be held accountable for their actions as well.”
Organizers of the 2021 Los Angeles Day of Remembrance are: Go For Broke National Education Center (GFBNEC), Japanese American Citizens League-Pacific Southwest District, Manzanar Committee, Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, Nikkei Progressives, Organization of Chinese Americans-Greater Los Angeles, Progressive Asian Network for Action, and Visual Communications.
For more information, call (310) 834-7770 or email gkitayama@manzanarcommittee.org.