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Standing Strong!
Fillmore & Japantown
Sunday, May 22, 2016, 1-3pm  FREE

San Francisco Public Library
Latino  Hispanic Community Room
100 Larkin Street, San Francisco

“Standing Strong! Fillmore & Japantown” explores the
overlapping history of African Americans and Japanese
Americans in neighborhoods deeply eroded by the
displacements of WWII and urban renewal—and now by
gentrification. How has displacement impacted ordinary
people? What do we remember of the old days? What do
we treasure? What are today’s challenges? What keeps
us going, and what have we learned?

Readings, music and visual art by community writers,
performers and artists evoke the spirit that still burns
brightly—though our neighborhoods have been shaped by
incarceration, red-lining, redevelopment and gentrification.
In 1960s and 1970, the wholesale demolition of 100 blocks
of housing and businesses happened all too quickly; the
promised “renewal” came much too slowly. Today,
gentrification again endangers our community resources,
churches, family-run businesses and close-knit networks.

Members of Shizue Seigel’s Write Now! Japantown and
Write Now! Fillmore writing workshops will read from our
Standing Strong! Fillmore & Japantown community
chapbook. Writers include Sandra Bass, Charles Dixon,
Jennifer Hasegawa, Mary Ann Hori, Juanita Tamayo Lott,
Grace Morizawa, Roger Oyama, Queennandi Shabazz,
Juanda Stewart, Kenji Taguma, Sheridan Tatsuno, Landa
Williams, and Shizue Seigel. Singer/songwriter Kimi Sugioka
and others will perform, and a slideshow will showcase
works by Japantown and Fillmore artists Rodney Ewing,
Mark Harris, Choppy Oshiro, Malik Seneferu, Shizue
Seigel and Project Level.

Join us afterwards for a reception and purchase your copy
of the Standing Strong! chapbook.

Supported by a San Francisco Arts Commission Individual
Arts Commission and the Asian Pacific Island Cultural
Center, and sponsored by the San Francisco Public
Library and the San Francisco African American Historical
& Cultural Society.

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