last thursday 10/10 from 5 to 9 pm, the anonymous volunteer block protested HUSTLER CASINO’s ‘Asian Fever’ beauty contest. we had three banners, a cardboard sign and a bunch of flyers. the banners read “‘ASIAN FEVER’ CONTEST IS RACIST & SEXIST”, “DEMAND DIGNITY AND RESPECT FOR ASIAN WOMEN”, “RACISM” with an arrow underneath that was pointed at the casino. the cardboard sign said “HONK IF YOU ARE SICK OF RACISM” and the flyers had a copy of the LAWEEKLY ad and our response, shown here.
HUSTLER CASINO must not be very proud of their 'Asian Fever'. They had bombastic signs for every other conceivable thing ("BLACKJACK!", USA flag!, animated dominoe walking around! piles of money!) but no visible announcement or sign or evidence of 'Asian Fever' until their 'representative' came out to defend his corporation.
response from passersby was overwhelmingly positive.
although earlier we had worried about our visibility once it got dark, we had no problem because our banners were white cloth with black lettering and the headlights of cars lit them up.
the final protest will happen on Thursday Oct. 17th – please look for a notice here in the LA-IMC newswire and join us.
here’s some more description of the protest from
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2002/10/19624_comment.php#20147>commentary previously posted on the newswire:
..within minutes car after car after car was honking in support. we were very pleasantly surprised. straight off we were smiling and raising a fist in response to the raised fist salutes we kept getting. a big rig went by and blasted out its horn. a few different times some kids would roll down their window and yell "HONK HONK!" and call out to tell us their horn was busted. mostly it was people of color and women who honked, smiled, waved, and asked for our flyer..
..we had a very good time. a young woman crossed Redondo Beach Blvd. to talk with us, a boy crossed to tell us that racism was in his school also, the vice president of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance joined us and helped us hold our signs. it sounds strange to say this but - even some european looking drivers honked and waved at us, but i don't remember any of them doing the raised fist thing. we went home chilled and excited and full of optimism. mostly we couldn't get over how cool random people are.
www.sscnet.ucla.edu/aasc/mvmt www.aamovement.net/history/history.html 