Freedom Without Justice : The Prison Memoirs of Chol Soo Lee

__Freedom without Justice__ is a compelling story of ex-inmate Chol Soo Lee’s wrongful incarceration and the actions he took to survive years in prison, while political activists fought to win his retrial and freedom. It is at once a captivating chronicle of his life, a trenchant description of how prisons produce the very behaviors they purport to punish and prevent, and a poignant remembrance of an important chapter in Asian American history following the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. At the age of twelve, Chol Soo immigrated to the United States from South Korea to reunite with his mother, who had arrived earlier as a military bride. In less than a decade, Chol Soo finds himself labeled as a violent criminal, convicted, and incarcerated for murder. His case quickly became a rallying point for an extraordinary pan–Asian American movement in the late 1970s and early 1980s, bringing together foreign- and American-born Asians in a common cause of justice and freedom. Organized under a national network of the Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee, supporters included student activists, elderly immigrants, small business owners, white-collar professionals, social workers, lawyers, religious and legal organizations, and left-wing groups nationwide. The united front was a remarkable coalition of people from a broad spectrum of social backgrounds that transcended ethnicity, class, political ideology, religion, generation, and language. This diverse grassroots social movement organized a six-year “Free Chol Soo Lee!” campaign that led to Lee’s historic release from San Quentin’s Death Row in 1983. __Freedom without Justice__ provides a rare and valuable glimpse into a pivotal moment when the Asian American movement spearheaded one of its first major political campaigns. While the case inspired newspaper headlines, TV specials, and even a Hollywood movie, until now the full story has never been told in Chol Soo Lee’s own voice. As a chronicle of the life of a youth at risk, during a time when Asian American inmates were scarce, and Korean Americans even scarcer, his story draws readers into a variety of social worlds—war-torn Korea, the streets of San Francisco, the criminal justice system, prison gang politics, and death row. Freedom without Justice is the compelling story of Chol Soo Lee's wrongful imprisonment and his years of survival in prison, while political activists fought to win his freedom. His saga took place against a backdrop of great historical change in Asian American communities following the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act. In 1973, less than a decade after he immigrated to the United States from Korea at the age of twelve, Lee is convicted of murder and given a life sentence. Four years later, his case became a nationwide rallying point for an extraordinary pan–Asian American movement during the late 1970s and early 1980s, bringing together people from a broad spectrum of social backgrounds for a common political cause. This diverse grassroots activism organized a six-year "Free Chol Soo Lee!" campaign that led to his release from San Quentin's Death Row in 1983. While the case inspired newspaper headlines, TV specials, and even a Hollywood movie, until now the full story has never been told in Chol Soo Lee's own voice. Freedom without Justice reveals the race and class dimensions of US correctional institutions from the perspective of convicts who fiercely refuse to be victims. As a chronicle of the life of a youth at risk, during a time when Asian American inmates were scarce, and Korean Americans even scarcer, Lee's memoir draws readers into a variety of worlds—war-torn Korea, the streets of San Francisco, the criminal justice system, prison gang politics, and death row.

Many contemporary explanations of conscious human experience, relying either upon neuroscience or appealing to a spiritual soul, fail to provide a complete and coherent theory. These explanations, the author argues, fall short because the underlying explanatory constituent for all experience are not entities, such as the brain or a spiritual soul, but rather relation and the unique way in which human beings form relations. This alternative frontier is developed through examining the phenomenological method of Martin Heidegger and the semiotic theory of Charles S. Peirce. While both of these thinkers independently provide great insight into the difficulty of accounting for human experience, this volume brings these insights into a new complementary synthesis. This synthesis opens new doors for understanding all aspects of conscious human experience, not just those that can be quantified, and without appealing to a mysterious spiritual principle.

Contents Acknowledgments Editor’s Introduction Prologue Chapter 1. San Francisco Chapter 2. Vacaville Chapter 3. Tracy Chapter 4. Defense Committee Chapter 5. San Quentin Postscript Glossary of Prison Terms