Eric Byler on Irrationality in Prince William County Virginia

Eric Byler

My Heart is Where the Bottles Shatter
By Eric Byler
Sunday, December 16, 2007; Page B04
Washington Post

The most powerful elected official in Prince William County is introduced to a standing ovation. The first time I see him is through a camera lens, entering like the hero of a movie I am watching rather than making.

My team and I are the only people of color in a large auditorium at Stonewall Middle School in Manassas. "People who come to this country illegally are illegal!" Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey A. Stewart thunders, jabbing his finger in the air.

The lens is a glass wall. I am focused but detached. I hear a woman cackling with joy as an officer from a group called Help Save Manassas takes credit for Latino parents' being afraid to send their children to school, for Latino families' abandoning their mortgages and fleeing the county. "This is our territory," he boasts. "And we're gonna take it back."

More clapping, more cheers. I process these moments like a child observing a bully from a distance. The victim is over there, not here, and I am just a witness. Zoom in. Zoom out.

Weeks later, it is a beautiful September afternoon. A canvas sign is tethered to the last remaining wall of the house at 9500 Liberty St. "When our brothers & sons are fighting & dying in Iraq you are separating our families," part of the giant sign says. These and other words have enraged many of the town's Caucasian residents, but these Latino families are proud to stand in its shadow. They feel they are standing up to bullies.

Known as Liberty Wall, this sign has become the expression of protest for many in Prince William County. Even non-ethnic citizens are concerned about a new law that could lead to the racial profiling of people who "look illegal." The families around the wall look American to me, but maybe I'm not a proper judge. My mother is Chinese American and my father is white. I grew up in Virginia, in a time when Asians and Latinos were less common than Cowboys fans, but since then I've frequented more cosmopolitan places such as Los Angeles, Honolulu and New York, places like Virginia is becoming.



My headphones pick up a stray voice. I turn and see a man standing at the fence enclosing Liberty Wall. He screams at everyone he sees, accusing them of being "illegal," even though they are documented Americans. He points at a 12-year-old boy, suggesting that he is destined for "one of those gangs," and looms over the boy's younger sister, who defiantly says, "I speak English fine." Both children hold their ground, hardened perhaps by epithets, eggs and bottles that have been thrown at them, or by "messages" left on their property, riddled with profanity, obscene drawings and racial slurs, telling their community to "go home" and reminding them that America's founders were white.

The next night, a vandal tries to burn down Liberty Wall. Soon after, another will succeed in destroying the sign, ripping it to shreds.

These are the questions facing our society. Who is American? And who gets to speak? I am reintroduced to the Chinese American boy I was in 1981 at Kings Park Elementary. I hear the word "chink." I see my classmates tugging at their eyes.

The bullies are not as distant as I remembered them. I may see the world through a lens, but my eyes are open, and my heart is where the bottles shatter, on the Liberty side of the fence.

eric@9500liberty.com


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121401326.html
photo: http://a722.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/00795/12/71/795921721_m.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/9500Liberty : The Real World of Prince William County

An Immigration Flashpoint, Through Our Lens
Sunday, December 16, 2007; Page B04
Opinions
Washington Post

How did Prince William County, one of the richest, most diverse counties in the nation, become a flashpoint in America's battle over immigration? What led to threats of racial violence during public meetings and grown men screaming at children on the streets? And how did a team of Asian American documentary filmmakers end up in the middle, with both pro-immigration and anti-immigration forces demanding that they take sides?

On Oct. 9, Eric Byler and Annabel Park began posting short video clips on a YouTube channel they created called "9500Liberty" at http://www.youtube.com/9500Liberty. The "interactive documentary" project took its name from a street address in Old Town Manassas where a sign had been posted, reading: "Prince William Co. Stop Your Racism to Hispanics!" The sign -- on what was known as "Liberty Wall" -- protested a county policy that requires police to check immigration status during routine traffic stops and denies some services to undocumented immigrants. The county, like many places across the nation, is in the middle of a demographic transformation: Since 1990, its Hispanic population has quadrupled; today one in five of the county's 360,000 residents is Hispanic; and the number of Asians has more than doubled.

Since it started, "9500Liberty" has been viewed more than 270,000 times and garnered comments from all over the globe, including hate mail and death threats. On Friday, Byler testified before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

In the following two articles and a video essay, the filmmakers turn the camera on themselves and reflect on their experiences.

Annabel Park: I Can Relate to America's Identity Crisis.

Eric Byler: My Heart is Where the Bottles Shatter.

A Comment on Immigration From 9500 Liberty Project Filmmaker

Annabel Park, Filmmaker, 9500 Liberty Project













For those of you in Houston, did you know that the name of country station KIKK is a spin off from the acronym of the Ku Klux Klan? Annabel Park, who lived in Houston in the 1980s tells us there is more than country music in the station's name.

I Can Relate to America's Identity Crisis
By Annabel Park
Sunday, December 16, 2007; Page B04
Washington Post

When I was growing up in Korea, being told that you were going to America was like being told that you were going to heaven. In 1978, my family applied to immigrate to the United States from South Korea. After only a six-month wait, the application was approved, and as if by magic, the five of us were transported to Houston to live with my aunt's family. I was 9 years old.

My parents were not skilled. But within a matter of weeks, they were selling tacos and burgers to mostly Mexican workers living and working in downtown Houston.

Neither my parents nor their customers could speak English. Somehow they found a way of communicating their basic needs: exchanging money, feeding and being fed. The Mexicans loved our tacos, and my parents succeeded in their first U.S. business venture.

I was in awe of America and wanted desperately to fit in, but I was constantly reminded that I was a foreigner, told to go home, ordered to learn English and called racial slurs. I didn't understand the significance at the time, but I remember large billboards along the highways that seemed to read, "You're in KKK Land." When you got closer, you could see a little "i" that looked like a cowboy boot between the first and second K's; the billboard was actually advertising a country-music radio station, KIKK.

My insecurity about being foreign, not fitting in, not really being perceived as American, has been a constant in my search for my identity. But alongside these insecurities sits my childhood romance with America, which my friends who had the privilege of being born here don't quite understand.

Since Eric and I began documenting the fight over immigration in Prince William County, I've been forced to reflect on my own immigration experience and about what America is.



Once, a white man approached us while we were filming a group of Latino people in front of a pro-immigration sign. A chain-link fence separated him from us, but I reached across to shake his hand and introduce myself. His grip was so tight that it frightened me. He squeezed my hand while denouncing "these people" for "raping the land," as opposed to the Vietnamese and Koreans, who had learned to speak English and assimilated.

Eric captured this scene and put it up for the world to see on YouTube. Many people watching the video see a white racist; I see a man suffering from an identity crisis, feeling displaced in his neighborhood. He is nervous, anxious, the flip side of my own insecurity as an immigrant, and I feel a lot of compassion for him.

I want to say to the man at the fence, and to the immigrants gathered at Liberty Wall: We're in this together. Much as my parents found a way to communicate with their customers at their Houston carryout, so too can we overcome any differences in language and values -- and find a way to live and work together.

But people did not come together in Prince William County. The county supervisors passed the illegal-immigration resolution. I believe the process was not democratic. One organized interest group dominated it by bullying, spreading misinformation and inciting intolerance.

America is not just a country, not just a particular place in space and time, but a promise to live according to our highest ideals. If we succumb to intolerance and fear now, at this critical time in America's story, we will all have failed.

annabel@9500liberty.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121401330.html
photo: http://www.koamco.org/images/annabel2_shb9.png