Forward Together

LA Together Season 2

Stories about what it means to be next-generation Korean and Black Angelenos, 30 years after the historic Civil Unrest.

Producer: Daniel Hahm

Guests: Activist, Haewon Asfaw and Therapist, Gonji Lee

Haewon Asfaw is a Black-Korean community organizer and a founding member of Black Lives Matter LA. Social activist and lifelong Angeleno, Haewon, was only two years old when the LA Unrest erupted. While she doesn’t have a memory of those six days in 1992, she shares her story of growing up with a Korean mother who was a reporter for the Korean Times during the Uprising and an Ethiopian father and how growing up in the shadow of the ‘92 Civil Uprising shaped the woman she became. Haewon has experienced firsthand the intricate dynamic between the two communities, and she has advocated for the betterment of both in the past decade.

Gonji (Jessica) Lee is a Korean therapist and community organizer.  Gonji grew up in Koreatown but their family was displaced by the 1992 riots and they and their family moved back to Korea for a time. Now as an adult living in Los Angeles, they have been working on intergenerational trauma and healing in the Korean community. Gonji says, "As a queer, femme Korean child of immigrants, I hope to provide a relevant healing space for folks to feel seen and heard. I am passionate about decolonizing healing practices and believe that there must be individual (psychotherapy), community (interdependent care systems), and systemic (community organizing & advocacy) change in order to set up the conditions for our communities to thrive.”

Stories about what it means and how it feels to represent Korean and Black Angeleno experiences through art, 30 years after the historic Civil Unrest.

Producer: Hanna Kang

Guests: Artist, Victoria Cassinova and Filmmaker Justin Chon

Victoria Cassinova was born in 1993 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, more than 1,800 miles from Los Angeles and a year after the city was wrought with one of the most devastating civil disturbances in modern U.S. history. Tensions between the Black and Korean communities were already bubbling beneath the surface. It erupted when a Korean-born shopkeeper was placed only on probation for fatally shooting 15-year-old Latasha Harlins after accusing her of stealing a bottle of orange juice. In the decades since she was killed, the dominant visual memory of Latasha has been of her final moments, captured on a grainy security video. But in 2020, Victoria was commissioned by Netflix to paint a mural of Latasha to change that.  Victoria worked closely with the Harlins family to showcase who Latasha was as a person. On January 2021, what would have been Latasha’s 44th birthday, the city unveiled the first public mural of Harlins at the Algin Sutton Recreation Center on Hoover Street. It’s a place where Latasha and her cousin spent most of their time. Thirty years later, Cassinova’s artwork serves as a bold advocate for social justice.

Justin Chon was 11 when the L.A. riots erupted. Though he was young, the experience left a deep impression on him, especially when his father’s shoe store was looted on the last day of the uprising. In the past 30 years, documentarians have made a number of films and shows revolving around the uprising, but to Chon, they didn’t seem to fully represent the Korean American perspective he encountered as a child. In 2017, Chon produced “Gook,” a deeply personal film that takes inspiration from his feelings as a young boy witnessing his city burn.  Chon is now the director of the drama series “Pachinko,” based on the highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling novel by the same name. He is a vocal advocate for the Asian American community.

A story about what it means to spend a lifetime – and to build a friendship - dedicated to uniting the Black community and Korean community, 30 years after the LA Civil Unrest.

Guests:  Pastor, J Edgar Boyd, Pastory, First A.M.E. Church of Los Angeles and Emile Mack, Executive Vice President of the Korean American Federation of LA (KAFLA).

Reverend “J” Edgar Boyd is the Pastor of the 148-year-old First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles (FAME), the oldest African American church in Los Angeles. Assigned to the church in 2012, Pastor Boyd leads a congregation of thousands and emphasizes Biblically-based spiritual practices, stewardship, congregational involvement. In addition to ministering to the spiritual needs of the congregation, he has empowered the church’s leadership (through a commission system) to more proactively address the overall health, social and educational needs of the parishioners and the larger diverse communities in Los Angeles. Rev. Boyd was pastor of Bethel AME Church of Los Angeles at the time of the 1992 Civil Unrest and was called to the scene of several conflicts between the Black community and the Korean community to help foster and promote peace.

Emile Mack was one of the Los Angeles firefighters called to battle blaze after blaze as projectiles were hurled at them and as gun battles broke out between Korean merchants and looters during the 1992 Civil Unrest. Mack was a post Korean War orphan, adopted by a South-Central Los Angeles African American family.  He joined the LA Fire Department and rose to Chief Deputy second-in-command. He is now the Executive VP of the Korean American Federation of LA; Board Member, Biddy Mason Foundation, the outreach ministry of the First AME Church in LA (FAME).

Producer: Elle Davidson, USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism