Google Celebrates Activist Yuri Kochiyama’s Legacy with Doodle Art for her 95th Birthday
Google produced a colorful doodle to celebrate the birthday and legacy of Yuri Kochiyama, an Asian-American activist who fought for human rights and justice. Kochiyama was a life-long activist at the forefront of issues in the black, Latino, Native American and Asian American communities. She was involved in many movements including Malcolm X’s black nationalism, Puerto Rican independence, and attaining reparations for Japanese-American internees. A 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Kochiyama died in 2014, but her legacy continues to inspire younger generations of activists today.
Grace Yia-Hei Kao is writing on Yuri Kochiyama as part of our upcoming Spring Institute for Lived Theology 2016/2017. SILT 16/17: Can I Get a Witness? is a two-part SILT that will celebrate scholars, activists, laypeople, and religious leaders whose lived theologies produced and inspired social justice in the United States and will produce a single volume entitled Can I Get a Witness? Stories of Radical Christians in the U.S., 1900-2014. The first meeting will be held at the University of Virginia in June 2016; the second meeting will follow at Loyola University Chicago’s Water Tower Campus in June 2017.