FoxNews.com reports that
She endured Japanese American internment during World War II and later helped convince the government to apologize and repay the victims, she opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam and befriended Malcolm X – all before she said she “admired” Usama bin Laden following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
As police departments around the country report increasing hate crimes against Asian Americans, New York City’s Lincoln Center hosted a pop-up performance to honor the civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama on what would have been her 100th birthday this week during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
The California native spent most of her adult life in the Big Apple. But even though she adopted New York as her home, in a 2003 interview with The Objector magazine, she praised the man responsible for a horrific attack that killed 2,606 of her unsuspecting neighbors on a sunny Tuesday morning.
“I’m glad that you are curious why I consider Usama bin Laden as one of the people that I admire,” she told the interviewer. “To me, he is in the category of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, all leaders that I admire. They had much in common. Besides being strong leaders who brought consciousness to their people, they all had severe dislike for the U.S. government and those who held power in the U.S.”
So critics, some center employees among them, blasted the move to honor her in New York City’s leading performing arts venue – just months before 20 years will have passed since the terror attack. (Navy SEALs finally caught up with him 10 years ago this month.)
Kochiyama was also adamant about visiting Peru’s Communist Shining Path in 1993, according to a 2005 biography by Diane Carol Fujino. The Maoist guerilla group was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government and had a record of torturing, raping and assassinating civilians over ideological differences, according to Human Rights Watch.
Kochiyama, as a Japanese American, had been forcibly interned by the U.S. government during World War II. After her release, she became a prominent activist and her lobbying helped convince the Senate to approve reparations for the internees and apologize.
Her advocacy extended to many other causes, across racial lines. She opposed the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa. And she pushed for Puerto Rican independence and Black Nationalism.
In 1965, she was there when Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem, appearing in a famous Life magazine photo kneeling beside him in his last moments.
She died in 2014 at 93 years old. She would have turned 100 Wednesday, when the pop-up took place at the center’s Alice Tully Hall Atrium.
In a statement to Fox News, the Lincoln Center said the event was meant to highlight Kochiyama’s life of civil rights activism amid a nationwide spike in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
“Yuri Kochiyama dedicated her life to activism for Asian Americans and all communities of color, and she inspires activists to this day,” a spokesperson said. “In the wake of the recent violence perpetrated against Asians and Asian Americans, the Pop-Up performance was designed to be an artistic reflection on decades of activism within the AAPI community. It is not a condoning of one individual perspective—rather, an acknowledgment and exploration of the ongoing clarion calls for systemic change.”
Artists involved in the performance declined to comment.
President Biden on Thursday signed a bipartisan bill into law that aims to address the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. It passed 94-1 in the Senate and 364-62 in the House.
The new law will enhance federal assistance for state and local hate crime investigations.
Why would an Anti-American Far Left Activist be honored during the year of the 20th Anniversary of the worst ever Terrorist Attack on American Soil?
It is all a part of Far Left Marxism-loving Democrats’ quest to “radically change” America.
They do not believe in America Exceptionalism, American Patriotism, and Love of God and Country.
To them, America is just another nation, and to them, we “had it coming” on 9/11/01. Somehow, in their feeble little minds, they believe that America slighted or aggrieved the Muslim World so horribly, that they were driven to attack us.
The ungrateful ignorance that these “New Bolsheviks” or “Progressives”, demonstrate, through their ongoing damaging Machiavellian schemes to bring down this “Shining City on a Hill” proves to me that they just don’t understand the cost that our fellow countrymen have had to pay to defend and preserve our American Freedom, whatsoever…and, in their self-absorbed ignorance, they do not care to.
Their self-absorbed arrogance is demonstrated in the feeble explanation given to Fox News as to why they honored the late America-hating Yuri Kochiyama.
So, why have these Wannabe Marxists failed, so far, to bring down this nation?
The answer is simple. Allow me to present a very special teacher to explain it to you, gentle reader:
Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom.
When the first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were no desks.
‘Ms. Cothren, where’re our desks?’
She replied, ‘You can’t have a desk until you tell me how you earn the right to sit at a desk.
They thought, ’Well, maybe it’s our grades.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Maybe it’s our behavior.’
She told them, ’No, it’s not even your behavior.’
And so, they came and went, the first period, second period, third period. Still no desks in the classroom
By early afternoon television news crews had started gathering in Ms. Cothren’s classroom to report about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.
The final period of the day came and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the desk less classroom, Martha Cothren said, “Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what he/she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom. Now I am going to tell you.”
At this point, Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it.
Twenty-seven (27) U.S. Veterans, all in uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. The Vets began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand alongside the wall. By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place those kids started to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned.
Martha said, ‘You didn’t earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you. Now, it’s up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don’t ever forget it.’
By the way, this is a true story.
And this teacher was awarded Teacher of the Year for the state of Arkansas in 2006.
Most Americans understand the Cost of Freedom. Freedom is not free.
And, those who continue to attempt to take it away from us are in for a big comeuppance.
Never forget September 11, 2001.
Until He Comes,
KJ
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