Submitted by H.N. Aoki,ポルノ映画 japan Steven Chun, Mario Correa, J.A. Quintana, Sheryl Quock, and Zen Sekizawa of J-Town Action と Solidarity
For the last two months, J-Town Action と Solidarity (JAS) has been posting flyers to raise community awareness about Tony Sperl’s illegal attempt to evict Suehiro Cafe and replace it with a marijuana dispensary.
For readers of The Rafu Shimpo, the fact that the man evicting Suehiro is a former police officer who retired in September 1983 after mistakenly shooting and killing a child (May 18, 1986 L.A. Timesarchives) who wants to turn Little Tokyo into “something that resembles Melrose” may come as a surprise, because The Rafu Shimpohas spent the last two months publishing articles characterizing JAS as “vandals” (Rafu, July 11, 2023) without once mentioning the name Tony Sperl.
As a matter of fact, the only times that The Rafu Shimpohas ever mentioned Suehiro’s eviction has been in articles criticizing JAS’ fight to raise awareness of it.
If The Rafu Shimpohad ever requested a comment from our organization before publishing an article attacking us, we would have happily used it to expose Sperl. But The Rafu Shimponever reached out to us — we’ve reached out to them, for a meeting that has yet to materialize.
At this point, we have to ask: who here has the courage to stand up to Tony Sperl? We intend to hold a forum within the next three or so weeks to find the answer.
But first, it seems that those of us in JAS need to reintroduce ourselves. We can only imagine the rumors that are swirling about the “vandals” roaming Little Tokyo. The truth is far more simple: we’re people who love Little Tokyo. And there’s a lot more of us than the three or four people who sometimes show up in the news (none of whom, for the record, are in charge of our organization — in JAS, individual members act on their own initiative and we use democratic decision-making to resolve whatever disagreements emerge).
We’re people who live here, work here, and run (or have run) small businesses here. We’re waiters and contractors; artists and students. We’re people who go to Nisei Week, Tuesday Night Project, and dance at Obon. We’re Yonsei (even Gosei) and immigrants, 40-year-olds and college kids; we’re Buddahead, Asian Amerikan, and all the other beautiful colors that weave into the tapestry of Little Tokyo. Most importantly, we’re people who remember the camps and refuse to say “shikata ga nai.”
That’s why we set up tables every Saturday to share food and resources among folks who need it. No one in our community needs to go houseless or hungry — it canbe helped. And that’s the reason why we’ve been putting up flyers exposing Sperl’s attempt to turn Little Tokyo into Melrose.
Gentrification isn’t inevitable — it canbe stopped. It can’t be stopped if we act alone, but it can be stopped if all of J-Town acts in solidarity together.
For the past two months, our main tactic has been a flyering campaign that directly exposes Sperl to the rest of the community. Bulletins displaying Sperl’s face and crimes were posted on signs, electric boxes, and lamp poles throughout the neighborhood — contrary to the rumors we’ve been hearing, nothing was ever posted to the windows of a business (some were posted on the pillars of Sperl’s building and on the empty wall of the Miyako Hotel).
A few bulletins were posted on the empty areas of sidewalk on First, which the Little Tokyo Community Council (LTCC) publicly condemned as vandalization of Omoide no Shotokyo. All the bulletins were made of simple printer paper and affixed with an impermanent mixture of water and flour.
Do other community members have a right to criticize our flyering tactic? Of course! Everyone in our community has a right to criticize each other’s tactics — just as long as we criticize each other in the interest of ultimately strengthening the fight against our trueenemies.
We take issue with The Rafu Shimpoand LTCC precisely because they choose to publicly label us as vandals without even acknowledging that Sperl was the target of our flyers. They offered criticism without also offering dialogue, which is especially egregious in the case of LTCC since JAS is a registered, dues-paying member of LTCC (no one on the LTCC board bothered to inform us ahead of time that a statement criticizing JAS was being published).
Criticism without dialogue does not strengthen our community but instead divides it.
There’s more than one way to stand up to Tony Sperl. Indeed, the only way Little Tokyo can hope to stop gentrification is by pursuing every avenue available to us. Not every tactic we try will be a good one, and flawed tactics deserve honest criticism. But make no mistake: just as surely as there will always come a time for compromise, there will also always come a time where the only way to stand up to our enemies is to confront them head on. No community can overcome gentrification without at some point taking direct action.
JAS, to be clear, is far more than an organization of confrontation. The center and vast majority of our work — what we have done every Saturday for two and a half years (135+ Power Ups) — is about building up the community through mutual care. But whenever the time comes that our community needs someone to take action, we won’t hesitate to stand up and confront gentrification.
Someone needed to expose Sperl to the community, so we exposed him. Our main regret is that no one was able to expose him sooner, before Suehiro and Family Mart were coerced to leave.
We would love to work with those who criticized our tactics (and anyone else in Little Tokyo) to ensure that our community is never kept in the dark for this long again. The time has come for Little Tokyo to build a united front for our community’s self-determination (Nikkei Progressives’ recent community discussion on Suehiro was an excellent start).
We invite everyone in the community to join us in organizing an open forum to continue the conversation (among other things, we would love assistance in finding the best space and time for this forum). Who else is ready to stand up to Tony Sperl?
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Opinions expressed in Vox Populi are not necessarily those ofThe Rafu Shimpo.