On Dec 3rd, AMNY published a news article titled “Political leaders say Lower East Side fliers are hate-filled smears against local lawmakers.” The article quotes the political leaders from East Village who accused the poster on the storefront of National Mobilization Against Sweatshops (NMASS) of being racist. This poster illustrates Chinzilla–a monster with the body of Godzilla from Japanese movies, and the head of Margaret Chin, Chinese-American Council Member. The article also gives Chin a platform to say how “hurtful” she thinks the poster is.

Chin describing the poster as “hurtful” is like a thief crying out when she sees her picture on a wanted poster. Chin is notoriously known in the Chinese community as a sellout politician who carries out the City’s racist displacement agenda — benefiting rich developers and destroying Chinatown and the Lower East Side, a neighborhoodpredominantly of Chinese, Black and Latinos who work, live and operate small businesses. The “Chinzilla” poster is an accurate depiction of Chin’s destruction of our community for more than a decade, a reflection of our community’s outrage towards her racism and displacement.

Therefore, we are angry about the AMNY’s coverage that helps the smear attack from the East Village political leaders. These people who wrote the complaint about the poster are the same ones who supported the East Village Rezoning in 2008 — a protective plan against luxury high-rises for the wealthier, white neighborhood of East Village — but denied Chinatown & Lower East Side the same protection. At that time, Chin was the head of Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE) which, despite its name, ironically supported this racist rezoning plan. Our community has been calling these people out as racists or supporting racist policies. 

For the last 10 years, our community has been pushing the passage of the entire Chinatown Working Group (CWG) Rezoning Plan to have the same protection as East Village. Why don’t the accusers of the poster say anything about their own racism or the racist policies against Chinese and other people of color? Why didn’t AMNY cover the protests in the Chinese community against Chin? Do they know that Chin, in response to the community’s outcry, actually doubled down her racist act by proposing to divide the CWG plan? Her proposal would protect only a small part of Chinatown and exclude Blacks, Latinos and Chinese in the Lower East Side. This caused a lot of uproar in our community. 

NMASS, Chinese Staff and Workers Association (CSWA) and other organizations came together and stopped her divisive efforts. How dare AMNY and those accusers, whocome from outside neighborhood or don’t know this history, accuse NMASS of being racist without any investigation? NMASS has consistently spoken out against racism upon people of color, whether it comes from White, Chinese or other people of color, whether from sweatshop bosses or from politicians. NMASS is a teaching example for usChinese people, as it leads the fight to unify people across boundaries to speak out against racism and displacement. The “Chinzilla” poster is one example of such effort. We would like to further spread the poster at our center and on the storefront. On behalf of our community, we would also like to award the artist of the poster $1000 to continue to create art to battle racism.

To AMNY and those who criticized the poster: If you are genuine about fighting racism, you should cover and support our fight against the City’s racist displacement agenda, instead of supporting racist policies or helping amplify racist politicians’ words.

Wing Lam

Executive director
Chinese Staff and Workers Association