Linda Arrigo

Infobox Politician
name = Linda Arrigo
party = GPT

Linda Gail Arrigo (艾琳達; pinyin: Ài Líndá) is an American—Taiwanese (Republic of China; ROC) political activist, human rights activist, and academic researcher. She is the international affairs officer of Green Party Taiwan.

Biography

Born in the United States to Joseph and Nellie Arrigo, she went to Taiwan as a teenager in 1963 with her father, a United States Army logistics officer who was assigned to Taiwan. [Arrigo, Linda Gail. - [http://taiwanease.com/pdf/issue1.pdf "1960’s Taipei through American Eyes"] . - "Taiwanease". - No. 1 - September 1, 2006. - (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document). - Retrieved: 2008-07-19] Arrigo attended Taipei American School and after graduation returned to the U.S. in 1968 and received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, San Diego.Funabiki, Jon. - "The price of protest -- 7 years in prison". - "San Diego Union". - May 12, 1987. - Retrieved: 2008-07-19] She then attended Stanford University and obtained a masters degree in Anthropology in 1975.

Arrigo returned to Taiwan to begin work on her doctorate in Sociology by studying the labor issues of Taiwanese women entering the workplace. Working with these women, and their families, would lead her to see Taiwan from their point-of-view and in the late 1970s she became active in politics. She became an activist in the early years of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), and married the DPP chairman, Shih Ming-te in 1978 (the couple formally divorced in 1995). The following year, 1979, she was deported and then blacklisted from Taiwan, by James Soong, for her involvement in the Kaohsiung Incident. She returned to California and then moved to New York. [http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/local/archives/1999/09/13/2387/print "Prominent opposition activist, writer Linda Arrigo ties the knot"] . - "Taipei Times". - September 13, 1999. - Retrieved: 2008-07-19] The ROC government falsely accused Arrigo of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).Mathews, Jay. - "Crackdown Leaves Taiwan Opposition Leaderless, Weak". - "Washington Post". - January 3, 1980. - Retrieved: 2008-07-19]

In 1980, after the most violent political riots in thirty years, martial law was declared and Shih Ming-te was imprisoned for ten years. In the 1990s Arrigo was permitted to return to Taiwan, where she became politically active in the Green Party Taiwan and Taiwan Environmental Protection Union. She taught at Shih Hsin University in Taipei and acted as a liaison for non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

In the mid 1990s she finished work on her Ph.D (1996), while living in Vestal, New York, from the State University of New York at Binghamton. ["Taiwan 's move toward independence". - Christian Science Monitor. - December 13, 1994. - Retrieved: 2008-07-19] The title of her doctoral dissertation was "The Economics of Inequality in an Agrarian Society: Land Ownership, Land Tenure, Population Processes and the Rate of Rent in 1930’s China". [ [http://archive.rockefeller.edu/publications/newsletter/nl1997.pdf "Recent Publications"] . - "Rockefeller Archive Center Newsletter". - Fall 1997. - (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document). - Retrieved: 2008-07-19]

In 1999 she published "Muckraker! An Overall Critique of the Opposition Movement in Taiwan", a collection of her political essays. Arrigo married for the second time in September of 1999, to Ho Shu-yuan, a bus driver at a Taipei primary school that she meet doing environmental volunteering.

In 2001 she (along with Wang Feng-ying) accused Parris Chang, a Democratic Progressive Party legislator, of sexual harassment. Chang filed a libel lawsuit against the two women. ["DPP legislator accused of sexual harassment". - "Straits Times". - June 14, 2001. - Retrieved: 2008-07-19] Arrigo also filed a lawsuit against her former husband, Shih Ming-te, for alimony. She won the lawsuit but Shih said he would only pay the money if she would "behave herself". ["Legislator's former political wife seeks alimony". - "The China Post". - November 16, 2001. - Retrieved: 2008-07-19]

She publicly criticized her former husband, Shih Ming-te, in 2006, when he launched a campaign to oust President Chen Shui-bian. Arrigo contended that his campaign was financed and supported by the Kuomintang (KMT). ["Shih's ex-wife suggests he was backed by the opposition in campaign". -"The China Post". - August 18, 2006. - Retrieved: 2008-07-19]

References

Further reading

* Rubinstein, Murray A. editor, (1998). - "Taiwan: A New History". - USA: M.E. Sharpe. - ISBN 9781563248160 - OCLC search link|60186182