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BN: Well, let me get to... let's see. We only have a few minutes. One thing we always ask people is -- well, one thing with regard to Gidra is, at the time you were working on it in the, right after it closed down, were you aware of the historical significance of it? I mean, you must have been to some degree, right? Because you had carefully kept all the issues and you had bound copies and all of that. I mean, were you kind of cognizant of the impact that it had and would have in the years to come?

MM: Well, I think in some ways, you can answer this better. But my guess is that for a period of time after '74, it was not... it was not that relevant to most people, it was kind of lost in the dustbin. But after a while, even before Densho digitized, there seemed to be a development of more interest. And it might have had to do with more people going into Asian American Studies. You remember we had Roots and Counterpoint, and then beyond that, there were very little. But after a while, Amerasia Journal is another sort of a pioneering publication. But there's lots of publications like that. I think I never saw Gidra as sort of this preeminent thing that surpasses all others, or something like that. There was one of many efforts that people contributed to, and I had no idea that we'd be sitting here how many years later? Fifty-something years?

BN: Fifty-plus.

MM: That we would even be talking about it. And I mentioned earlier, we didn't have that perspective of documenting everything that we did in the way traditional newspapers do, or that academia requires. But it's a strange thing, because on the one hand, I never thought the reach would be beyond the '60s and '70s. But on the other hand, I'm very grateful that people -- this is sort of a revival -- and I think Brian and Densho had a lot to do with the accessibility to accommodate that appetite. Because you don't have to go see Margie to ask for something. You can go look it up. And fight her for whatever she's holding out there. Anyway, so I think... so on the one hand, I feel like I'm really grateful that people take an interest in it, and in a way, I'm kind of fascinated by that myself. Why do people see Gidra as something that, that sort of entry point for, like, exploration of a lot of things. And I would say this, too, since we're winding down. Some of the lessons, I mean, I feel like, as I mentioned, baby boomers, Sansei generation, that whole era in which we grew up, where we thought anything is possible and we can just have an influence on lots of different things, I think that's an important thing for young people in any era to sort of capture and hopefully get in their minds and their souls and feel like we could do something. If we don't like something, let's try to change it. We like something, let's try to build on it, that sort of thing. I think about, like nowadays, like even in nonprofits or other things that we talk about, who should play what leadership position. And age comes up, like, wow, that person is only twenty-five, or that person is twenty. Well, have to remember a time when we were leading major things in our twenties, twenty-five, and there's that saying about you're never too young to lead and never too old to learn. And I think that is a really fitting thing to keep in mind. And another thing that I heard my old boss say is, "Give yourself permission." You don't need permission from somebody else older than you or somebody in a higher position. If you think something should be done, go and do it. And you rally people around you and do something. And I think that spirit, I hope young people can take that spirit and feel like it is possible. I mean, the first point about the young people leading, you have to remember, Martin Luther King was twenty-five years old when he led the Montgomery bus boycotts and Rosa Parks and all that. And he was in a minister's conference of maybe a hundred and fifty, two hundred people where the average age was about seventy. And he was given the opportunity to lead, and he led that. Fred Hampton was twenty-one years old, a Black Panther leader in Chicago. There's so many other examples of young people making a difference because they dared to do it. And I think that's a big lesson for Gidra, and it applies to a lot of other things, too.

BN: Very good. I think that's a good place to close for now. So, yeah, thank you very much.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.