Dinner And a Doc | Free Chol Soo Lee

I moved back to L.A. and I've gotten kind of reacquainted with my mom's cooking again.

I had a little bit forgotten how much I like spam.

Spam and eggs, spam and stew... - I hope you're all hungry.

(laughter) - When you look at the Chol Soo Lee story, my gosh, you know, the victim of racial profiling and railroading in our criminal justice system.

We're not used to seeing that.

We're not use to seeing an Asian American crusading investigative reporter who would dig and dig for the truth.

And then we're not used to seeing, like, this whole group of Asian Americans who would actually form a never before seen social movement in this country.

- Who knows about the radical history of Asian Americans?

Not enough people, certainly not enough Asian Americans.

We have this history too, this powerful activist history.

- How you begin organizing and getting the word out really took all the waking hours for a long time, for years.

There was so much work to be done on the outside to get him free.

- I got involved in the movement because it touched something in me.

So here I am sitting in class in San Francisco State, and this white woman says, "What?

Racism toward Asians?

I don't think so."

And all of a sudden, I found my voice.

My whole--really, literally, I saw my whole life go before me, and it was like, I'm not the one that screwed up.

It's the system!

So when I heard about Chol Soo, I immediately could identify with it.

[archival footage] That we're continuing and determined to fight.

- Yeah.

And you all made this history.

- Yeah, I guess it's just, it's still sinking in.

We're part of the history, but we were also part of creating that history, which is amazing.

It is.

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