WHO WAS KATHY CHANGE?

Had you been a student at Penn from the early 80's through the mid-90's you wouldn't have needed a leaflet to know who Kathy Chang(e) was -- she would have been in the corner of your eye constantly as you traveled from class to class or traversed College Green on the way to the library. Many other Philadelphians remember her frequent Sunday happenings in front of the Art Museum.

Colorful and flamboyant, Philadelphia's quintessential performance artist and activist adopted Penn as her second home, and via her unique, unorthodox, sometimes bizarre combination of theatre, dance, poetry and song she cheerfully exhorted students to cast off their materialistic fixations and join "The Transformation" - her vision of nonviolent utopian revolution in our time.

The daughter of well-placed Chinese academics who left for America in the wake of the Chinese Revolution, Kathy never fit in with the upwardly-mobile existence her family had envisioned for her. Her affinity for sixties culture, sexual freedom and marijuana led to endless clashes with her parents, punctuated by her mother's suicide.

After deserting college she became drawn to the then-emerging renaissance of Chinese cultural activism, and married the renowned Chinese-American playwright Frank Chin. The union was relatively short-lived, as Kathy felt stifled in the shadow of her husband's celebrity, even attempting suicide at one point. During an ensuing period of self-redefinition Kathy experienced her vision of a future society, the achievement of which would motivate nearly everything she did for the next two decades.

 In a 1996 press release announcing her candidacy "for any available elected office" she referred to her saga thusly:

"In 1978 Change had a revelation which changed her life -- she was going to save the world. She soon discovered that this was called a Messianic complex ... after passing through New York, Change landed in Philadelphia in 1981 and has 'hardly left since'...She does her performance art political demonstrations at the Philadelphia Art Museum steps on Sunday afternoons, on the University of Pennsylvania campus and wherever she happens to be."

The essence of Kathy's "revelation" was that the American system has become hopelessly stagnant, corrupt, bureaucratized, undemocratic and lethal, and we can and must act as one to put the country back in the hands of the people. She envisioned this as not only a nonviolent process, but a legal/Constitutional one as well.

She foresaw an economic collapse, and urged that people at that point should spontaneously, instantaneously and in unison drop out of their system roles, party in the streets, and convene a nationwide conference to democratically restructure the government to serve real human needs. She detailed her ideas in tapes and writings she left behind, and in the packets she left with friends and media that morning.

In them Kathy explained her final act:

 "I want to protest the present government and economic system and the cynicism and passivity of the people in general...I want to get publicity in order to draw attention to my proposal for immediate social transformation. To do this I plan to end my own life. The attention of the media is only caught by acts of violence. My moral principles prevent me from doing harm to anyone else or their property, so I must perform this act of violence against myself..."

Kathy's self-immolation sent shock waves throughout the Penn campus and the city and made headlines internationally. The New York Times did a feature article the following month (though it was characteristically lacking in depth).

However, six classes at Penn have come and gone since and few have heard of Kathy at this point; even fewer know what she was trying to say. As Friends of Change, some of us have made a point of organizing a memorial every year by the Peace sculpture on College Green, at which we encourage those interested in transformational social and political change to voice their views and evoke their living visions of a new society via words, song, theatre or any vehicle of creative expression. We distribute Kathy's writings, play her tapes, and try for a day to relay her message in a way she would enjoy.

Beyond that, we honor Kathy in pursuit of no particular ideology other than the achievement of peace, freedom, justice and equality for all people. We honor her commitment, her passion for the world's future, and her dedication to her vision even unto death, as premature a death as she decided hers must be. Though we wish she had chosen differently, and we miss her, we continue to share many of the same dreams and understand the urgency she felt in the face of the real horrors she sensed coming.

Kathy never stopped believing that the people can choose to take control of our lives and collectively transform the present course of destruction and self-destruction into a rebirth of progress, creativity and community.

"CALL ME A FLAMING RADICAL BURNING FOR ATTENTION, BUT MY REAL INTENTION IS TO SPARK A DISCUSSION OF HOW WE CAN PEACEFULLY TRANSFORM OUR WORLD. AMERICA, I OFFER MYSELF TO YOU AS AN ALARM AGAINST ARMAGEDDON AND A TORCH FOR LIBERTY. "

Kathy Change/October 1996