When We Come Together, We Win
We offer our gratitude to Betty Yu (a co-founder of the Chinatown Art Brigade) for sharing her family history, recollections, and lived experience as a Chinese American organizer to showcase how real people navigated these forms of exclusion.
Understanding the historical context that has shaped New York City’s Chinatown is essential. Examining the legacy of colonialism is a crucial part of this narrative.
Asian Americans have long been misrepresented through Orientalist stereotypes that were created to justify colonialism in the East. Despite claiming to unify humans together, the framework of Orientalism became inherently flawed once there was a shift from helping to controlling people for power. Through the categorization of the Orient, cultural groups were put into a box, dehumanized, and stripped of individual human traits. The Orient, in the European lens, was “passive and silent,” the basis of an ideal stereotype that has been twisted to fit the narrative of different time periods. During the mid 1800s, the Euro-American commodification of Asian people showed how white Americans crafted stereotypes to economically benefit from the backs of Asian people while making sure they could never be equal. Fear of competition incentivized racist attacks, and propaganda posters took over newspapers to warn people about the “yellow peril.” Characteristics of Orientalism, portraying Asian Americans as inferior and easily manipulated, have since served as a foundation of racism, silencing and influencing which stories were considered worth telling.
Betty Yu situates her family’s history within a longer continuum of exclusion that shaped Chinese American life in the United States. She traces this history back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the only U.S. federal law to restrict immigration by race and nationality, effectively barring Chinese immigrants from citizenship for six decades. Due to this legislation, four generations of her family were unable to establish permanent roots in the United States, despite residing there for decades. Like many Chinese immigrants, Betty’s great-grandfather entered the country as a “paper son,” using false family documents to circumvent the restrictive policies. This widespread practice was a survival tactic in response to the racialized deportation and surveillance. Across the West Coast, Chinese communities faced displacement and violence, including the burning of Chinatowns by white nativists as a result of Orientalist stereotypes.
In New York City, exclusion continued through economic exploitation. Chinatown became a site of garment factories and restaurants that relied on the labor of immigrants under harsh conditions, limited legal protections, union corruption, and stolen wages. Betty’s mother was one of those people, working 12 to 13 hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week, to put food on the table. You can learn more about Chinese women's organizing within the garment industry in fellow LHP Youth Researcher Clarissa's exhibit, found here. In the 1980s and 1990s, workers organized hunger strikes and lawsuits that led to landmark victories, including the recovery of millions of dollars in wages. Betty explained, “It really showed that when Chinatown workers come forward, and they unite, they can win, so that was really inspiring,” a testament to the power of collectivism in challenging systemic exploitation.
After 9/11, Chinatown’s garment industry collapsed. Developers purchased property at extremely low cost, which transformed these factories into luxury offices and businesses. These changes intensified gentrification, which led many community members to turn to visual art, murals, projections, and public storytelling to document the histories that were being erased from the neighborhood. This project will follow collectives that were created to respond to the political landscape of their time, such as the Basement Workshop in the 1970s to 1980s, the Chinatown Art Brigade, and Apex for Youth, to demonstrate how artistic activism in Chinatown emerged as a necessary response to exclusion and defying Orientalist stereotypes through creative means.
“Our stories are part of a continuum. It doesn’t start with us, and it doesn’t end with us.” - Betty Yu
Did a basement really help redefine what it meant to be Asian American?
During the 1970s, many children of immigrants came of age during the civil rights, antiwar, and feminist movements. Chinatown was transitioning from a bachelor’s society into a neighborhood with many young families. This created a need for cultural and creative spaces where “all ideas and discourses were welcome, and nothing was impossible.” The Basement Workshop emerged from a literal basement as the first self-identified Asian American arts collective in New York, in a time when being “Asian American” was newly invented, replacing the term “Oriental.” The Basement Workshop drew young people who wanted to play a part in redefining what it meant to be Asian in America. Basement was an umbrella organization where anyone who had the interest and initiative could organize programs of their choice. It attracted people who were just graduating or still in school, who were not yet professional artists, where it was acceptable to “proclaim” oneself a poet even without publication. It was a blank canvas for art-centered political activism on Asian American identity.
The inception of the Basement Workshop goes back to 1969 with Danny N.T. Yung, who was a Columbia University urban planning student. He was doing research, later known as the Chinatown Study Group and the Chinatown Report 1969. Then, Danny Yung, along with Eleanor Yung, Peter Pan, Frank Ching, and Rocky Ching, found a basement on 54 Elizabeth Street to continue their work. At the time, these spaces were available at relatively low prices, and this basement became a gathering place for young artists and activists alike.
The Basement Workshop was founded on the principle of reciprocity. It was through love and care for other people’s happiness that the Basement Workshop thrived. Basement member Teddy Yoshikami emphasizes this idea through her descriptions of Fay Chiang, the executive director of Basement, who gave so much to the organization. She says, “Fay gave her time and energy freely, even dropping out of college to run Basement.” This was not uncommon; members sacrificed so much. Many put a pause on their education, and most worked without pay. In fact, Fay never paid herself; she always volunteered.
When asked why these sacrifices were made, Basement member Arlan Huang said, "Well, I think that during those times, it was an audacious time. I think people ran on a very romantic notion that revolution was a real possibility. So…it was really dedicated to changing this society. And [Basement] was important enough not to go to school, because school seemed to be really irrelevant to what we were doing. [Basement] was very important."
Basement members relentlessly contributed their efforts and talents to the collective, which was powerful in a time when there were very few spaces for them to do so. The Basement Workshop was not just a space for creative expression, but a site of possibility and imagination. Here, young Asian American organizers rejected socially approved paths that they were expected to follow under Orientalist logic. These were routes that emphasized respectability and “model minority” behavior of not protesting or disrupting how society is, which was heavily reinforced by schools. Basement members challenged this logic of Orientalism by choosing direct engagement with their community. They prioritized collective art creation because they believed it could make a difference and took control of their own identity. Basement members were producers of resistance, showing how art became inseparable from teaching and organizing, offering more than school could provide. Members were the shapers of their own reality.
We thank Basement Workshop member Tomie Arai for her recollections in oral history format, which help us document and celebrate the legacy of the Basement Workshop.
The Yellow Pearl (1972) was an anthology that had 57 prints on yellow paper that featured the writings and artworks of over 30 Basement workers. The Yellow Pearl was a play on the term “yellow peril,” which was a racist phrase used to provoke anti-Asian sentiment across the United States. The Basement Workshop deliberately flipped this language that was at first built on exclusion into a phrase of collective identity and pride. The creative choice of yellow paper reinforces this reclamation, embracing the idea that Asian American voices were not dangerous, but vibrant and political.
The Yellow Pearl is a powerful example of using art to rewrite racist narratives and challenge Orientalism. The image below depicts Uncle Sam, a symbol of the United States government. He is shown covering his ears, refusing to listen, while the phrase “the People’s Beat” takes over across the background. This is meant to illustrate the willful ignorance with which Asian American voices have been dismissed and silenced. The repetition of “People’s Beat” portrays this community of resilience that is refusing to give up. Here, yellow is used to reclaim a color that has historically been used to stigmatize Asian people.
Basement Workshop member Tomie Arai compared the process of creating the Yellow Pearl with a philosophy of the Black Panther Party called “each one teach one,” in which individuals empower each other by passing on skills. Tomie says that Basement was a part of this philosophy, building a space that trained artists, writers, and future educators. Arai explicitly explains how, “There wasn’t anything like this in Chinatown, so it did feel like a way to create and rebuild something that wasn’t there…there was a 'do it yourself kind of spirit,' and a commitment or willingness to plan and construct things that you thought should exist.”
“So many of the young people who joined Basement and Yellow Pearl…they’re really beginning to try to understand who they were…how they could really shape their own identities…I felt like Basement was…an example of something that came out of a real need for [this] kind of space, for people who are really searching…for a way to express themselves and to really find a place for themselves, not just in Chinatown, but in the world, around them, and it was possible in those days, to create those…spaces. Because I often think about…the 60s and 70s, [they] were a time when people were really thinking very deeply about alternatives to exist." - Tomie Arai
“The Wall of Respect for the Working People of Chinatown” (1977) was a third mural in a community mural revival series that took place in New York, sponsored by the City Arts Workshop located on the side of the Music Palace Theater at the corner of Bowery and Hester.
Tomie Arai situates this mural within China’s Cultural Revolution, with the abundance of propaganda in the streets of NYC’s Chinatown. It was a very divided time, and this political climate contributed to the idea that people needed to band together to achieve community benefits. Rather than contributing to state propaganda, the mural used a community-centered approach to depicting the realities of Chinatown’s working class. Tomie says, “I feel like Chinatown has always been a very complicated political place. And I think that the people I met were very committed to seeing change in Chinatown that would benefit the lower-class people who lived there.”
Tomie Arai describes murals as a way to get people to come together. For her, the mural-making process is rooted in listening and conversation. Not only did the scale of the mural require the hands of many, but this collaboration also reflected how change has actively occurred in Chinatown. The inspiration came from the everyday labor that has sustained Chinatown. Arai explains, "'The Wall of Respect for the Working People of Chinatown' was really a mural that came out of the discussions we had with young people who lived near the wall and wanted to honor their fathers who were waiters and their mothers who were garment workers. I think that was something that came out of a storytelling experience, a sort of oral history sharing experience that later became a big part of what I was doing with my work, which I really still value as part of the process of learning about a place, and the people who live there.”
Part of creating public work also meant interactions with people who were reacting to the art. There weren’t many murals in 1970s Chinatown, so as Arai painted, she expressed the experience of having an audience that would walk by every day. She explained how much time she spent talking to people who had something to say and how they would notice if you painted an apple, asking questions like “Why did you use that color?” Murals or public art in general can transform spaces — and the people within them. They weren’t necessarily trying to create monumental, permanent works of art, but murals by nature can be territorial, marking a space and boundary.
Arai remembers a conversation with one of the residents, Mr. Wong, who lived in a single-room occupancy residence. “At the time, we weren’t thinking the murals were going to last very long, but this one was up for decades. Mr. Wong, who had lived at 81 Bowery for almost 20 years, told me that he loved that mural, that every time he saw that mural, he knew he was almost home. I thought it was very moving.”
For these residents, the mural became part of their daily life. It affirmed the dignity of the working class that lived there, transforming this public wall into a memory. Though the mural was taken down along with the building it adorned in the fall of 2006, its legacy lives on through the people it has impacted. In remembering Mr. Wong’s words, Arai’s reflection is a reminder of how art can preserve important stories.
“ I feel like we're just one part of a big chain of people. Now it's successive generations of people who build on what others have done. And I feel like there's tremendous overlap. People are beginning to see the value in working together.” - Tomie Arai
The concept of intergenerational impact as a “big chain” is the core of artistic activism in NYC’s Chinatown. Not only was Tomie Arai an active member of the Basement Workshop, but also a co-founder of the Chinatown Art Brigade. Founded in 2015, the Chinatown Art Brigade (CAB) was created out of necessity. CAB is a collective of Asian American and Asian diasporic artists and organizers driven by “the belief that our cultural, material, and aesthetic modes of production have the power to advance social change.” These artists felt the urgency to respond to the mass gentrification occurring in Chinatown.
Since 9/11, Chinatown has seen the loss of over 15,000 housing units for low-income families. There has been a 30% increase in luxury housing and an increase in the white population that threatens the cultural identity of the neighborhood. The small businesses and places that Chinese people have called home for decades are under attack.
As New York City becomes increasingly unaffordable for these longtime residents, mass displacement has occurred due to “predatory equity.” This is the practice of corporations investing in buildings with rent-stabilized and low-income apartments to renovate and increase market rent rates. Landlords evict their tenants with construction-related harassment, legal action, and aggressive buyout, often involving neglect and intimidation. Simultaneously, this practice has driven a movement to build tenant power, which is the heart of CAB’s work.
The Here to Stay Project was created in 2015 in collaboration with the Chinatown Tenants Union of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities (originally the Coalition Against Anti-Asian Violence, now focusing on fighting displacement and advocating for institutional change). The Here to Stay Project is a multimedia project that includes a series of large-scale outdoor projections that center on themes of gentrification and stories of people impacted by housing displacement, with the goal of community resilience in New York City’s Chinatown.
The artwork is based on oral histories, “placekeeping” anti-displacement walking tours, mapping, photography, and powerful images, videos, and animation created in cultural art workshops. These were featured on the Here to Stay Projection event through video montages that were projected onto public buildings in Chinatown and the Lower East Side in partnership with The Illuminator.
These projections could be seen by everyone on the streets, as they were coming out of the subway or even when buying groceries. People would look up unexpectedly at these messages saying “We’re here to stay; our struggles are connected; gentrification is the new colonialism” in Chinese, Spanish, and English. People would stop, and there was a chance for organizers to talk to passersby.
The public projections onto the buildings of Chinatown created this two-way dialogue in the community that would have otherwise been impossible if it were in a museum or other private space. This created a conversation for everyday people to communicate the issues they were facing.
One of the most popular interactive activities was The People’s Pad, which was a tool made by The Illuminator that let people write messages as they passed by that were projected on a large scale. During September 2016, CAB used quotes from tenant stories that showed the conditions they lived in and were projected across the street from a building where tenants had sued their landlord.
Betty Yu explains, “A lot of them were everyday Chinatown residents learning about the organizing. That was a very powerful moment. The tenant members of the organization also rewrote the lyrics of a very famous pro-tenant Chinese song, and you had all these people on the street singing it because they knew the song.”
By projecting multilingual messages and artwork drawn from oral histories onto public buildings, CAB’s Here to Stay Project became a site of reclaiming public space for the community. The moment that Betty describes of residents spontaneously singing a rewritten pro-tenant song they already knew as the lyrics were projected onto the building shows how art can bring out these shared cultural memories for solidarity. The projections invited people to talk about their shared struggles through familiar languages and narratives. And in this way, it clearly shows that the survival of a community depends on working together as well as how art can be a unifying tool.
When asked how these projections changed how people experienced Chinatown, Betty responds that these projections were one tactic, among many, designed to be visible for tenants to learn about self-advocacy and for gentrifiers to stop and think about their role in displacement. Betty explains that in the context of gentrification, “There’s no such thing as neutral.” Everyone has a footprint and can make a choice.
By celebrating resistance and giving residents an outlet to tell their own stories about displacement, the Chinatown Art Brigade is one example of many that brings us as a society one step closer to understanding how art and culture can influence the communities we live in and contribute to a “culture of resistance.”
Across decades of organizing in Chinatown, artistic activism has never been encapsulated into a single moment. From the Basement Workshop’s creation of an Asian American cultural and artistic space in the 1970s to the Chinatown Art Brigade’s public resistance against gentrification, art has consistently united residents of Chinatown. Tomie Arai’s lifelong commitment to this work across both collectives demonstrates an evolution: art not only preserves memories, but also serves as a medium of inheritance that can be shared and passed on to future generations.
Like the Black Panther Party’s “each one teach one” philosophy, the Basement Workshop and Chinatown Art Brigade reject art as just an individual pursuit. Instead, both groups are rooted in storytelling, collaboration, and a responsibility to the community. Tomie described how the first thing that the Chinatown Art Brigade tried to do with their projections was to help tenants understand what culture really means. “It’s not just art with a capital A, it’s language and food and how you treat each other. It’s about behavior, it’s about caring, it’s about your legacy and what you bring with you to the process.” (47:35) This definition of culture positions Chinatown residents as active producers of their own community. CAB encouraged everyone, regardless of their artistic experience, to contribute something to their projection campaigns to fight for the preservation of Chinatown creatively. By doing projects together, initiated by the community, tenants, and organizers, CAB reaffirms art as a shared responsibility.
For Tomie, this approach is mutually exclusive with building a legacy. She reflects that, "The most important thing is to build a movement and everybody can take part in that, and everyone has a role to play. This has to be a priority because we’re not going to be able to change what’s been happening overnight.” (1:06:40) Artistic activism, then, is not about the immediate results but about the long-term.
When asked about the takeaways of her work, Tomie notes that “Right now, I feel like kindness is so important. How we treat each other and how we envision the world we want to live in are so important. What is the end goal here? I think that art that comes out of genuine love for people and for this earth is life-altering and can have an impact on other people.” (1:08:31) Especially in the context of displacement, kindness becomes a political value. By reframing art through the lens of how we treat each other, Tomie humanizes CAB’s artistic initiatives.
It is this idea of kindness and collectivity that enables movements to form for generations. As Chinatown continues to evolve, the new question becomes, how can art equip young people to carry these histories forward? The legacy of the Basement Workshop and the Chinatown Art Brigade is not just resistance, but mentorship and the passing of ideas.
Tomie Arai’s reflection of culture being a part of “how you treat each other” is the same framework for understanding Apex for Youth.
Apex for Youth, originally called APEX, was founded 33 years ago in New York City’s Chinatown in 1992 by five friends who saw that Asian American youth were lacking support. Apex was established to combat the model minority myth, the perception that all Asian Americans are affluent. In fact, 1 in 2 of Asian American youth live in or near poverty in New York City, and one in five live in homes where no one over 14 speaks English well or at all, according to city data collected by the nonprofit.
Starting with a small budget of $2000, Apex was created as a volunteer-led mentoring program to allow youth to imagine greater possibilities. It started very volunteer-based; this was not their job or anything they were paid for. It was really born out of this model of mentorship and this hope and vision for a world where Asian Americans, especially those from low-income immigrant backgrounds, can thrive. From its beginnings, Apex was built on relationships, paralleling the organizing principles of Basement and CAB. As one student, Lau, reflects, "Apex isn't just providing the support. They're almost like a second family."
Now, Apex is one of the largest organizations in the United States serving Asian American Youth across three New York City boroughs and national remote programming. According to Apex’s 2025 fiscal year, 2,700 youth were served with over 1,000 volunteers engaged. Yet despite this growth, Apex’s core mission is rooted in the same values articulated by Tomie Arai: kindness, reciprocity, and imagination.
Part of what makes Apex significant in Chinatown’s history of artistic activism is its commitment to reimagining possibility. Like the Basement Workshop’s belief that young people could proclaim themselves artists even with zero experience, Apex encourages young people to envision futures beyond constraints of poverty, racism, and the model minority myth. And it is through mentorship and creative programming that Apex extends this legacy of artistic activism that remembers Chinatown’s history and is ready to take part in changing its future.
tktk
Tomie Arai is a third-generation Japanese American born in New York City. She is a visual artist and community activist who attended the High School of Music and Art, now known as Fiorello H LaGuardia High School of Music, Art & Performing Arts. Arai was a valuable member of the Basement Workshop involved in the Yellow Pearl and working on a Mural called the Wall of Respect for the Working People of Chinatown in 1977. Tomie Arai has continued to impact the Asian American community through co-founding the Chinatown Art Brigade alongside Betty Yu and ManSee Kong.
Betty Yu is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, educator and activist raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn to Chinese immigrant parents. In 2015, Yu, along with Tomie Arai and ManSee Kong, co-founded Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective telling stories of Chinatown tenants fighting gentrification through public projections and art that received the 2016 A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art. Betty Yu’s documentary, Resilience, about her garment worker mother fighting sweatshop conditions, screened at national and international film festivals, including the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival.