This photo was taken during a protest outside the Central Police Station in San Francisco against the arrest of newsvendor Harry Wong in 1972. After he was taken into custody, the Chinese Progressive Association and I Wor Kuen, an Asian American leftist group, mobilized a protest on his behalf, demanding his release and arguing that he was practicing free speech. 

Wong, a newsvendor, was targeted because he was selling literature from Communist China and the New Communist Movement. He began selling this literature after awakening to the problems with capitalism and the American Government. His politicization partly stemmed from his harsh treatment under the Chinese Confession Program, run by the INS between 1956 and 1965. Under this program, Chinese immigrants were encouraged to confess to entering the US illegally in return for the possibility of being granted citizenship. However, instead, the government stripped Wong of any legal status he had, putting him in an “undetermined status” that lasted for the rest of his life. This had painful personal consequences for Wong, as he could never travel back to Hong Kong to see his wife and child.

He thus started supporting the Red Guard Party, which was founded in the late 1960s to fight injustices faced by Chinese Americans. This led him to open the first newstand in San Francisco Chinatown to openly sell Communist Chinese literature. Due to this, he was targeted by the police and arrested. Later, with community support, he won his case in court. It was because of this case that many Asian Americans became politically active. He lived the rest of his life continuing to distribute papers and attend meetings, hoping for a better America where everyone is treated equally. He died on January 11, 1981 of a pulmonary embolism.