Forwarded for Nikkei Progressives
Benefit Concert for Migrant Children
Saturday, September 21, 2019
8 pm Concert; 7 pm pre-show
Aratani Theatre – Japanese American Cultural and Community Center
244 S. San Pedro Street, Los Angeles
Grassroots community organizations in Little Tokyo are hosting a fundraising concert to provide 400 backpacks with needed supplies, support a shelter and provide travel funds for asylum-seeking children and migrant families being released from detention without any resources.
Quetzal Quartet & Friends, TAIKOPROJECT, Aloe Blacc and Maya Jupiter, and Alice Bag are performing in solidarity with the migrant and asylum-seeking families.
(Full Quetzal band won 2013 Latin Grammy; Aloe Blacc Grammy nominated 2014)
Organizing the benefit concert is Nikkei Progressives, a grass-roots, all-volunteer, Japanese American community organization formed after November 2016 in response to the Trump Administration’s attacks on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, immigrants and refugees.
Joining in support for the fundraiser are other Asian Pacific Islander, immigrant rights, social justice and campus organizations.
Proceeds will go to the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, a coalition of 50 religious, legal, civil rights and labor organizations; Our Lady of Soledad in Coachella (San Bernardino Diocese) and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
General admission is $35; reserved seating $100.
Contact: Mark Masaoka, (323) 356-6352; marktmasaoka@gmail.com
Background: Nikkei Progressives and their partnering organizations in the Japanese American and wider progressive movement are opposing the policies of detaining migrants and separating families, while drawing parallels between what is occurring now and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
In June, Buddhist ministers, members of Nikkei Progressives and the Japanese American National Museum, protested at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where Japanese Americans were incarcerated in the 1940s and where the U.S. government planned to detain 1400 children seeking asylum.
Due to mass protest, plans for opening Ft. Sill have been withdrawn. On June 27, over 750 people attended a protest in Little Tokyo against Ft. Sill organized by Nikkei Progressives and other Little Tokyo and Japanese American organizations.
