Chinese American community leader Ying Lee Kelley, former Berkeley City Council member, School Board member and longtime assistant to Congressman Ron Dellums.
I took a walk when the pandemic started with Ying Lee, who died this week. I took these two photographs of her, and she talked about her memories of her childhood in China. Then we laughed at how we defied the Berkeley School Board.
Ying's father came from China to the U.S. as a secretary in one of the tongs in the late 30s, leaving Ying, her mom and siblings behind. A harrowing flight from the invading Japanese army took them from Shanghai to Chungking, and finally landed them in San Francisco after the war.
When I was at Berkeley High School in the early 60s Ying was a teacher. Berkeley High already had Young Democrats and Young Republicans Clubs, so we organized a Young Socialist club with her son Paul and another friend, David Laub. Ying was our sponsor.
Ying Lee at a demonstration with grassroots people and political activists from the Occupy Oakland movement, marching through the city in November 2011.
As if that wasn't enough to get her in trouble, we invited a Communist to speak at the school, a move quickly prohibited by the principal. Although the school board overruled him, he got his revenge.
Ying was married to John Kelley, a renowned math professor at UC Berkeley, fired in the McCarthyite hysteria for refusing to sign a loyalty oath (a move later ruled unconstitutional). When Kelley had a year's sabbatical in India, and Ying asked for a leave to go with him, the school administration forced her to quit instead.
Ying never lacked for courage. She ran for city council in 1973, and became Berkeley's first (and only) Asian American council member. She fought to build left politics that now seem normal for Berkeley. Few remember that through the 50s and the early 60s the city had a very rightwing government. The East Bay routinely elected extreme conservatives.
Ying helped to break that stranglehold, and then went to work for Congressman Ron Dellums, who called for Henry Kissinger to be tried for war crimes during the Vietnam War (or the American War, as the Vietnamese call it). Ying fought our fights, and was arrested in many of them, from saving the downtown Berkeley post office to protecting BLM demonstrators in the streets. She sat in the Occupy tents at Oakland City Hall.
Ying Lee
She co-founded Asian Americans for Jesse Jackson, and was a McGovern delegate in 1972, at the height of the war. "I wore Viet Cong pajamas and a hat, and we tried to stop the bombing of the dikes," she once told a conference of activists.
Ying fought against anti-China hysteria, and spoke of her own experience, "The China that I left in 1944 was probably 99.5 percent poor and desperate. The China that exists today has no hunger, and people are housed and people are clothed. That to me is a miracle of the century."
Ying was one of the people who made us who we are, who fought racism and for the dignity of working people. You can see in her face that she never stopped. MORE THAN A WALL / MAS QUE UN MURO
More Than a Wall / Mas que Un Muro explores the many aspects of the border region through photographs taken by David Bacon over a period of 30 years. These photographs trace the changes in the border wall itself, and the social movements in border communities, factories and fields. This bilingual book provides a reality check, to allow us to see the border region as its people, with their own history of movements for rights and equality, and develop an alternative vision in which the border can be a region where people can live and work in solidarity with each other. - Gaspar Rivera-Salgado
David Bacon has given us, through his beautiful portraits, the plight of the American migrant worker, and the fierce spirit of those who provide and bring to us comfort and sustenance. -- Lila Downs
- a book of photographs by David Bacon and oral histories created during 30 years of covering the people and social movements of the Mexico/U.S. border - a complex, richly textured documentation of a world in newspaper headlines daily, but whose reality, as it's lived by border residents, is virtually invisible. - 440 pages - 354 duotone black-and-white photographs - a dozen oral histories - incisive journalism and analysis by David Bacon, Don Bartletti, Luis Escala, Guillermo Alonso and Alberto del Castillo. - completely bilingual in English and Spanish - published by El Colegio de la Frontera Norte with support from the UCLA Institute for Labor Research and Education and the Center for Mexican Studies, the Werner Kohlstamm Family Fund, and the Green Library at Stanford University
"The "border" is just a line. It's the people who matter - their relationships with or without or across that line. The book helps us feel the impact of the border on people living there, and helps us figure out how we talk to each other about it. The germ of the discussion are these wonderful and eye-opening pictures, and the voices that help us understand what these pictures mean." - JoAnn Intili, director, The Werner-Kohnstamm Family Fund TWO YEARS OF HEAT AND COVID IN THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY
Photographs by David Bacon
Kolligian Library at the University of California Merced 5200 N. Lake Rd. Merced, CA 95343 October 1, 2022 - February 10, 2023
Public reception October 13, 2022, 4-6 PM
IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH/EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE
Photographs by David Bacon
La Quinta Museum 77885 Avenida Montezuma La Quinta, CA 92253 January 8, 2023 – April 16, 2023
Online Interviews and Presentations
Red Lens Episode 6: David Bacon on US-Mexico border photography Brad Segal: On episode 6 of Red Lens, I talk with David Bacon.
David Bacon is a California-based writer and documentary photographer. A former union organizer, today he documents labor, the global economy, war and migration, and the struggle for human rights. We talk about David's new book, 'More than a Wall / Mas que un muro' which includes 30 years of his photography and oral histories from communities & struggles in the U.S.-Mexico border region. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71834023?fbclid=IwAR0BRhHYbrYU3BoeoAMFKU_zdHs5Xirmmt1LzQtfwf1yD8p9EYLXKhzzbDE
Letters and Politics - Three Decades of Photographing The Border & Border Communities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvs6SyXsM-4 Host Mitch Jeserich interviews David Bacon, a photojournalist, author, broadcaster and former labor organizer. He has reported on immigrant and labor issues for decades. His latest book, More Than A Wall, is a collection of his photographs of the border and border communities spanning three decades.
Exploitation or Dignity - What Future for Farmworkers UCLA Latin American Institute Based on a new report by the Oakland Institute, journalist and photographer David Bacon documents the systematic abuse of workers in the H-2A program and its impact on the resident farmworker communities, confronted with a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXKa2lHJXMs
Documentary Matters - View from the US Social Documentary Network Four SDN photographers explore themes of racial justice, migration, and #MeToo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWl-uENA7SQ&t=1641s There's More Work to be Done Housing Assistance Council and National Endowment for the Arts This exhibition documents the work and impact of the struggle for equitable and affordable housing in rural America, inspired by the work of George “Elfie” Ballis. https://www.thereismoreworktobedone.com/david-bacon Dark Eyes A beautiful song by Lila Downs honoring essential workers, accompanied by photographs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdC2gE3SNWw
Exhibited throughout the pandemic in the Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford. The online exhibition (https://exhibits.stanford.edu/bacon), which includes additional content not included in the physical show, is accessible to everyone, and is part of an accessible digital spotlight collection that includes significant images from this body of work. For a catalog: (https://web.stanford.edu/dept/spec_coll/NonVendorPubOrderform2017.pdf)
IN THE FIELDS OF THE NORTH / EN LOS CAMPOS DEL NORTE
Photographs and text by David Bacon University of California Press / Colegio de la Frontera Norte 302 photographs, 450pp, 9”x9” paperback, $34.95 (in the U.S.)
order the book on the UC Press website: ucpress.edu/9780520296077 use source code 16M4197 at checkout, receive a 30% discount
Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008) Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008 http://www.beacon.org/Illegal-People-P780.aspx
