"Citizen Who" by Eric Liu at Zocolo

I attending an amazing performance of a one man + presentation entitled "Citizen Who" by Eric Liu.  It was sponsored by Zocolo at The Actors Gang theater in Culver City.  This was the launch of Zocoo Public Square/Cal Humanities "Searching for Democracy" series.  He has been a fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion a former speech writer for Bill Clinton.  He has been traveling around the country and interviewing individuals on what it means to be an American. 

Liu is a second generation Chinese American whose mother came to the U.S. when she was 21.  She was college educated in Taiwan.  Liu's grandfather was a Chinese General who fought the Japanese and the Communist Chinese.

He talked with Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Polish- born American author and a Holocaust survivor.  She has written about hope, inspiration, love humanity and received an Academy Award and Emmy for a documentary based on her life and her fight to promote tolerance, encourage community service and combat hunger.  She was presented  the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2011.  Her first book was "All But My Life" 1957.

Between his stories another actor conducts the room as if it was a U.S. Citizenship class/exam.  We all stood to recite the Naturalization Oath and answered questions to an oral quiz.  Then Eric played patriotic songs on the violin.

He told his stories of going through the process to become an officer in the Marine Corp, working for a Senator from Oklahoma.

He talked about the internment of Japanese during WWI, the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882, Angel Island in San Francisco Bay where Chinese were interned and the U.S. history of exclusion, color coded, In/Out systems.

One hero he talked about was Mark Massey, a Pentecostal lay minister from Sand Springs, Oklahoma who has helped more than 500 Indian guest workers escape virtual servitude.  One Sunday, he noticed to workers from Indian in the back of his church and learned that they escaped from the steel factory across the street.  They were brought to this country as indentured servants to work long hours and live under restricted conditions.  He talked about Mr. Massey's "call of conscious."

He also talked about Antonella Packard from Saratoga Springs, Utah.  She came to the U.S. from Honduras as a university student then moved to Utah where she married into a family of entrepreneurs and became a Mormon.  She is a Republican and chair of the Utah Hispanic Latino Legislative Task Force.  She has supported immigrants' rights and talks about how it goes hand in hand with "conservative, Constitution-loving, free-market-type" thinking. 

Eric asked the audience what if we had to earn American citizenship.  We were asked to stand, raise our right hand and recite the "Sworn-Again American Oath"
"I pledge to be an active American to show up for others to govern my self to help govern my community.  I recommit myself to my country's creed:  to cherish liberty as a responsibility; to serve and to push my country--when right, to be kept right; when wrong to be set right.  Wherever my ancestors and I were born, I claim American and I pledge to live like a citizen."

It was a a moving and educational evening.