Bob Wing is a senior organizer and media coordinator with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ). Based in Durham NC, the SCSJ promotes justice by empowering minority and low-income communities to defend and advance their political, social and economic rights. Drawing on the combined skills of lawyers, social scientists, community organizers and media experts, SCSJ helps underrepresented people develop strategies to achieve their visions for themselves and their communities, incorporating an international human rights perspective.
Prior to this position, Wing was director of strategic projects for Community Coalition, a Black-Brown grassroots organizing group in South Central Los Angeles. A longtime activist, writer and editor, he has been activite in national and international struggles, especially racial justice struggles, since the late 1960s.
Wing was the founding editor of ColorLines magazine, a national magazine of race, culture and organizing, and edited and cofounded the anti-war newspaper War Times/Tiempo de Guerras.
A Chinese American, Wing was part of the first wave of Asian American activism in the late '60s. In 1969, he participated in the Third World Strike that led to the formation of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He later taught in that department and briefly chaired the Asian American Studies program.
Over the years, he has been immersed in some of the most intense and conscious efforts to theorize and to build multi-racial unity and to connect issues of war, racism and politics. Wing has helped start and lead such groups as the Third World Coalition Against the Vietnam War, the National Committee to Overturn the Bakke Decision, the National Anti-Racist Organizing Committee, and most recently, United for Peace and Justice.
Wing has published on issues of racial formation and racial justice, Iraq and the "war on terrorism," elections, Asian American history and the Asian American movement, Mexico, Palestine, sports, and the history of his family's six generations in the U.S.
Some of his essays include: "The Structure of White Supremacy and Election 2000 and 2004," "The Color of Abu Ghraib," "War, Racism and United Fronts in the Post 9/11 Era," "Crossing Race and Nationality: the Racial Formation of Asian Americans," "Educate to Liberate: Multiculturalism and the Struggle for Ethnic Studies" and "Hating Barry Bonds."
