Are we guilty of assimilating the Atlanta shootings to general headlines about anti-Asian racism? Do we risk losing the specificity of class, gender, and the massage industry in particular?
And are geopolitical and economic tensions between U.S. and China in the mix? Is this a moment for solidarity between Chinese, Korea, and other Asian diasporas, or a moment of splinter?
Plus: Tammy reflects on a rally in Brooklyn (thanks to the Patreon Discord chatroom).
Thanks for listening, supporting, and spreading the word. Stay in touch via email (timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com), Twitter, and/or Patreon.
Quick plug: This Friday morning NY time, join Tammy and a stellar group of labor leaders for a mini conference on the present and future of workers’ rights. Register for free here.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe
In light of the harrowing news out of Atlanta this week, we spoke with Yves Tong Nguyen, an organizer with Red Canary Song 红莺歌 (@RedCanarySong), a grassroots collective of Asian sex workers & allies who push for for migrant justice, labor rights, and full decriminalization.
Extended show notes after the break. First, here are some groups to learn about and support:
0:00 – Yves tells us about herself and Red Canary Song, and why they push for decriminalization rather than legalization. Plus: the material conditions, transnational history, and political rights of massage workers, sex workers, and other low-wage workers; and Red Canary Song’s connection to Song Yang, a Chinese migrant sex worker killed during a police raid in Flushing in 2017.
18:15 – Yves’s criticism of anti-trafficking NGOs, most of which partner with the police; why arguing over the labels “sex worker,” “massage worker,” etc. distracts from a broader assessment of criminalization policies; the respectability politics of separating and ranking workers; and why massage workers have common cause with other low-wage migrant Asian workers in food, nail salons, and service and manufacturing.
“Whether or not they are sex workers, they were harmed by the criminalization of sex work”
29:30 – Long before Atlanta, workers in the massage industry experienced violence from neighbors, ICE, police, savior-complex NGOs, and clients. Yves responds to the argument that we need police to “protect” Asian communities.
“The system itself protects itself. It is white supremacy itself, and it is made to protect white supremacists.”
38:30 – What does “justice” look like in Atlanta? Is calling murder a “hate crime” or “terrorism” helpful? Plus: how migrant workers and sex workers have reacted to the news this week.
“I know that people really want to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, if we put them in prison, it’ll be justice. But then are we also owning that every member of our community put into prison is also justice?’”
43:30 – Yves’s surprise at the media attention this week—and frustration about the status quo of ignoring this industry. And how we should all do better.
50:50 – Does this week connect anti-Asian stigmatization during the pandemic? Plus: why blaming Trump and racist rhetoric is mostly unhelpful.
“People want to say that that is the problem, that that is the root. But really it is a symptom. Trump’s rhetoric and people saying this and doing this is a symptom of things that have existed for such a long time. But people want to say that Trump is the problem, because then they can be like, if we can get rid of Trump then it’s good.
“Which is partially what I fear. I think that people might stop caring and think that we’ve solved it until the next awful thing happens.
“When you asked me about what I would tell people to take away from it, I want us to stop building and organizing in reaction to when people die. I want us to organize to keep people alive.”
Thanks for supporting Time to Say Goodbye. Please stay in touch:
timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com
https://twitter.com/ttsgpod
https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe
In light of the harrowing news out of Atlanta this week, we spoke with Yves Tong Nguyen, an organizer with Red Canary Song 红莺歌 (@RedCanarySong), a grassroots collective of Asian sex workers & allies who push for for migrant justice, labor rights, and full decriminalization.
Extended show notes after the break. First, here are some groups to learn about and support:
0:00 – Yves tells us about herself and Red Canary Song, and why they push for decriminalization rather than legalization. Plus: the material conditions, transnational history, and political rights of massage workers, sex workers, and other low-wage workers; and Red Canary Song’s connection to Song Yang, a Chinese migrant sex worker killed during a police raid in Flushing in 2017.
18:15 – Yves’s criticism of anti-trafficking NGOs, most of which partner with the police; why arguing over the labels “sex worker,” “massage worker,” etc. distracts from a broader assessment of criminalization policies; the respectability politics of separating and ranking workers; and why massage workers have common cause with other low-wage migrant Asian workers in food, nail salons, and service and manufacturing.
“Whether or not they are sex workers, they were harmed by the criminalization of sex work”
29:30 – Long before Atlanta, workers in the massage industry experienced violence from neighbors, ICE, police, savior-complex NGOs, and clients. Yves responds to the argument that we need police to “protect” Asian communities.
“The system itself protects itself. It is white supremacy itself, and it is made to protect white supremacists.”
38:30 – What does “justice” look like in Atlanta? Is calling murder a “hate crime” or “terrorism” helpful? Plus: how migrant workers and sex workers have reacted to the news this week.
“I know that people really want to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, if we put them in prison, it’ll be justice. But then are we also owning that every member of our community put into prison is also justice?’”
43:30 – Yves’s surprise at the media attention this week—and frustration about the status quo of ignoring this industry. And how we should all do better.
50:50 – Does this week connect anti-Asian stigmatization during the pandemic? Plus: why blaming Trump and racist rhetoric is mostly unhelpful.
“People want to say that that is the problem, that that is the root. But really it is a symptom. Trump’s rhetoric and people saying this and doing this is a symptom of things that have existed for such a long time. But people want to say that Trump is the problem, because then they can be like, if we can get rid of Trump then it’s good.
“Which is partially what I fear. I think that people might stop caring and think that we’ve solved it until the next awful thing happens.
“When you asked me about what I would tell people to take away from it, I want us to stop building and organizing in reaction to when people die. I want us to organize to keep people alive.”
Thanks for supporting Time to Say Goodbye. Please stay in touch:
timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com
https://twitter.com/ttsgpod
https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe
44:00 – Covid reflections. What were we doing one year ago when Rudy Gobert’s positive Covid test shut down the NBA (and Tammy’s neighborhood library closed)? Plus: Covid Asian nationalism, loopholes in the vaccine rollout, and retrospectives on last summer’s protests.
Thanks for listening! Please write in with questions and comments, and join our growing community: timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com, @ttsgpod (Twitter), https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod.
==
P.S. – If you’re free Thursday night U.S. time, come to Tammy’s presentation on Camp Humphreys, the U.S.’s largest foreign military base, with poet and translator Eunsong Kim, sponsored by the Heung Coalition, UC Berkeley, and U Mich.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe
Our special guest this week is the CHamoru activist attorney and writer Julian Aguon. Julian calls in from Guam to talk about his new book, The Properties of Perpetual Light, which comes out at the end of the month. (Pre-order it for you and a friend!)
Julian reads from the book and talks about:
* Developing his voice as a writer and mixing genres: from poetry to political commentary to personal essay;
* Guam/CHamoru identity and attempts to build solidarity with other colonized and indigenous peoples across the world;
Thanks for listening! Please write in with questions and comments, and join our growing community: timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com, @ttsgpod (Twitter), https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe
Our special guest this week is the CHamoru activist attorney and writer Julian Aguon. Julian calls in from Guam to talk about his new book, The Properties of Perpetual Light, which comes out at the end of the month. (Pre-order it for you and a friend!)
Julian reads from the book and talks about:
* Developing his voice as a writer and mixing genres: from poetry to political commentary to personal essay;
* Guam/CHamoru identity and attempts to build solidarity with other colonized and indigenous peoples across the world;
Thanks for listening! Please write in with questions and comments, and join our growing community: timetosaygoodbyepod@gmail.com, @ttsgpod (Twitter), https://www.patreon.com/ttsgpod.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodbye.substack.com/subscribe
We discuss the unfolding row over an academic article by Harvard law professor Mark Ramseyer, who argues, without evidence, that “comfort women” across Asia were not coercively indentured by the Japanese imperial army in World War II, but had legally consented to sex work. (For background on this debate, check out Tammy’s paper from 2006!)
Though typically irrelevant to the rest of society (lol), Ramseyer’s is the rare academic paper to invite public attention and, subsequently, outrage. His bizarrely unsourced work has triggered questions about Japan’s wartime responsibilities, unfree labor, sexual slavery, and ongoing geopolitical tensions in East Asia. And also, as Jeannie Suk Gersen, Ramseyer’s colleague, wrote last week in The New Yorker, the struggle at Harvard?
We discuss the unfolding row over an academic article by Harvard law professor Mark Ramseyer, who argues, without evidence, that “comfort women” across Asia were not coercively indentured by the Japanese imperial army in World War II, but had legally consented to sex work. (For background on this debate, check out Tammy’s paper from 2006!)
Though typically irrelevant to the rest of society (lol), Ramseyer’s is the rare academic paper to invite public attention and, subsequently, outrage. His bizarrely unsourced work has triggered questions about Japan’s wartime responsibilities, unfree labor, sexual slavery, and ongoing geopolitical tensions in East Asia. And also, as Jeannie Suk Gersen, Ramseyer’s colleague, wrote last week in The New Yorker, the struggle at Harvard?
We discuss the story buzzing throughout media: the hosts of the Reply All podcast, while reporting on the exploitative labor practices at Bon Appétit, had their own exploitative, anti-union activism exposed last week. What does this say about class versus race politics and the unionization movement in media? Plus, thoughts on the podcast-industry bubble.
(By the way, we are aware of the irony of talking, on a podcast, about another podcast that got canceled after talking about yet another podcast, so don't bother pointing that out!)
38:15 – “Minari”
Writer/director Isaac Chung’s “Minari,” starring Steven Yeun, has just been widely released. Is it a story about successful US assimilation or migrant ambivalence? Is it a universal or specific Asian-American tale? What is the state of Asian-diaspora storytelling in 2021, and when is the Forever 21 saga going to be made into a television movie?
We discuss the story buzzing throughout media: the hosts of the Reply All podcast, while reporting on the exploitative labor practices at Bon Appétit, had their own exploitative, anti-union activism exposed last week. What does this say about class versus race politics and the unionization movement in media? Plus, thoughts on the podcast-industry bubble.
(By the way, we are aware of the irony of talking, on a podcast, about another podcast that got canceled after talking about yet another podcast, so don't bother pointing that out!)
38:15 – “Minari”
Writer/director Isaac Chung’s “Minari,” starring Steven Yeun, has just been widely released. Is it a story about successful US assimilation or migrant ambivalence? Is it a universal or specific Asian-American tale? What is the state of Asian-diaspora storytelling in 2021, and when is the Forever 21 saga going to be made into a television movie?
