Kalamazoo Trip

 A week in Kalamazoo Michigan with Tony's family for Passover, March 2013.  We stayed with Fran's cousins Jo and Judy's houses.  We visited freezing Lake Michigan, the Frederick Meijer Garden in Grand Rapids, and just hung out with family.  Grandpa Don bought Maiya her first loom on this trip.

Grace's Groupies in SF

So it's been 10 years since I've been to San Francisco, when we went up with NCRR for a Report Back on our trip to Cuba in 2001.  When we heard our friends Grace Lee Boggs and Scott Kurashige (aka Tula's dad),  were going to be in San Francisco on a speaking tour of their new book, The Next American Revolution, Sustainable Activism for the 21st Century in March 2012, we decided to drive up to San Francisco to see them.  It's been two years since the US Social Forum, which was the last time we saw Grace and visited in Detroit.  Since it's late and I'm tired, this will have to be another photo caption blog post.  These are the top 13 out of 118 photos from the trip.

By kismet, our friend Joe Reilly was in Berkeley performing a
children's concert at La Pena Cultural Center that same morning.
It so happens that we met Joe through Grace at the Boggs Center, and our other friends in Detroit,
who at the time were part of the Long Hairz Collective.

Joe's latest CD is "Let's Go Outside," is one of his many works with
children, animals, nature and all things eco and Michigany.

Maiya with Daddy at the La Pena Cultural Center mural

One of a dozen or more self-portraits taken from the backseat.
I think this is one going over the Oakland Bay Bridge.

Maiya Grace wearing her Grace Lee tee

Visiting with Grace before her talk

Event sponsored by the Chinese Progressive Association (or whatever CPA stands for).
I liked how progressive and diversely API the crowd was, numbering around 400 people.
The previous day Grace had engaged in a conversation with
Angela Davis at UC Berkeley at a woman's conference with 1200 people attending.

Shea, one of our favorite and most knowledgeable Detroit-based activists
who we met in our summers volunteering with Detroit Summer

View from our hotel room

Grace Lee and Maiya Grace at an after party in Grace's hotel room

Tony talking with Grace about education or activism, I'm sure.

One of Daddy's original 3x5 cards

Meeting Tish!!!!

So, there's another one of our short trips, barely gone a day and a half.  I think we left at 4 am, and got up there in time to see Joe's 10am concert, then drove across the Bridge to SF to see Grace in the afternoon.  We then drove out to Grace's hotel near the airport to hang out, then back to our hotel near Chinatown.  The next morning, I went walking around San Francisco and loved it, and walked over to visit/meet Tish, one of my favorite blogger friends (and first blogger friends back in the days before FB when everybody was blogging) who I have been good friends with for 10 years, but had never met in person.  Something non-bloggers don't really get.  Tony and Maiya came to pick me up and ended up hanging out with us, just talking and catching up.  It was a great visit, and one that I hope to do again one day soon.  

Our only regret is that we didn't have time to see Manilatown, home of our Manzanar friends Al Robles and Bill Sorro, both who passed away in recent years, or our friend Jiro Kobashigawa, Tony's former landlord, an Okinawan activist, poet, artist, writer, who passed away this summer at the age of 97.

Peace. Out.
NaBloPoMo12 #7
(Backblogging March 2012)

Santa Barbara Overnighter for MLK Day

More backblogging... on the Kuida-Osumi family trip to Santa Barbara for Martin Luther King Jr Weekend.  How much playtime and activism can one family fit into a one night trip?  Lots!

$1 Tacos in Carpinteria

Santa Barbara Zoo

50 degrees outside in January, but the motel has a pool!

How Mom dresses at the pool when it's cold outside

March on State Street for MLK Day 

Marching with Daddy

What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! 

March ended at the Arlington Theater 

Stearns Wharf, Santa Barbara

Funny faces at the Aquarium on the pier

Ooh jellyfish!

Kuida-Osumi Mini-Vacation

MLK Sand Art

Peace. Out.

Happy New Year 2012

Kuida-Osumi's at Christmas 2011

Our 2011 holiday card - 2 CicLAvia's, cucumber from our garden, Manzanar & soccer 

Happy New Year 2012 - Osechi plate from Ayako H.

381 Miles for Justice and Back (in one day)

On Memorial Day weekend, Tony, Maiya and I rented a car and drove 381 miles to Phoenix to join the march protesting SB 1070, the recently signed Arizona law that will allow/force/legalize racial profiling against people of color.  It will authorize police to stop "suspected" undocumented immigrants based on the color of their skin and ask them for their papers.

We left at 3:30 in the morning, and arrived in Phoenix about 9:30 am.  I actually only slept about 2 45-minute naps the night before, and drove the first 3 hours.  Anyways, we found a place to park a few blocks from the beginning of the route, having seen that there was a train line that would take us back at the end of the day.  We had heard that the organizers were expecting about 50,000 people, but I really couldn't tell... altoarizona.com reported 100,000 people. Walking 6 1/2 miles in 90+ degree heat and not wanting to spend any money in Phoenix was something that I think our little family will always remember and was why we decided to go and come back in the same day.

Maiya wrote and decorated her own picket sign: 

"SB 1070: It's Not Right! Treat People Good"

Tony's sign compares SB 1070 with racist laws in our

history that target individual communities of color

Phoenix was hot... we heard 97 degrees... 

this is before we got to the 6.6 mile start line.

We were towards the back of the march. 

 Lots of families and strollers where we were.

Trying to beat the heat with popsicles, fruit, veggies and water

This sign was at the very end of the march, and passed us a few times.

Maiya's Si Se Puede Yoda sign was a big hit--

many people wanted photos and kids loved it.

Our sign "We drove 381 miles for justice" caused several 

groups of Arizonans to thank us for the support

KuidaOsumi--together for social justice

Some of the signs we saw said things like "Do I look illegal?" "Brown is not a crime." "We are all human." "European American immigrants were illegal.  1492." After walking almost 5 hours or so, we almost made it to the end. We actually got within about 7 streets from the end of the march and we could hear the speakers and the music.  We could see the State Capitol building just ahead of us. 

Unfortunately, I had kind of a dizzy spell/episode where the world started spinning and I started to feel like I was going to pass out.  I went to sit down, and kind of fell onto the grass in slow motion.   Anyways, after yet another bottle of water and a 20 minute rest, I was able to walk back to the train (yes, we did actually spend $3.50 in Arizona for trainfare and $2 or $3 for popsicles from marching vendors) to take us back to our car, where we took pictures in the parking lot.

After that, we got in our car, and Tony drove us 6 hours back home, stopping in Blythe for gas and making pita bread cheese and salami sandwiches out of the cooler in the backseat of the car.  I am glad we were able to go--since we missed the Los Angeles May Day immigrant rights march on May 1st.  It was Maiya's first trip to Phoenix.  And the only other time I had been to Arizona was about 17 years ago when I went with my parents and my brother Darin to the Gila River Camp Reunion/Pilgrimage, where my dad was incarcerated as a 10 year old during WW2 for being of Japanese descent.  

It was a hot and physically exhausting day, but an unforgettable journey... As I said to one Latino man about my age who thanked us for coming such a long distance, "We had to come."  Because according to Maiya, "SB 1070:  It's not right!  Treat People Good."

~~~~~~
This post is dedicated to the memory of father, husband, activist, organizer, teacher, poet, friend, 
John Delloro, who passed away at the age of 38 on June 5th, may he rest in peace and justice.