Spotlight: Asian Americans Advancing Justice
ASIAN AMERICANS ADVANCING JUSTICE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ANDY KANG, SAT DOWN WITH WOODS FUND CHICAGO In this month’s spotlight.
Andy, please tell me about Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the work your organization does.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago (Advancing Justice | Chicago) builds power through collective advocacy and organizing to achieve racial equity. We are closing in on our 30th year anniversary next year and we have built our organization around developing grassroots leaders in the Asian American community and running impactful issue campaigns to address the issues facing our communities.
Advancing Justice | Chicago combines grassroots base-building, advocacy, and civic engagement to build power, strengthening our ability to hold elected officials accountable to a progressive, community-driven agenda to move us towards racial equity. Through culturally-relevant training and opportunities, we see the emergence of powerful grassroots leadership from immigrant and refugee communities, whose contributions lead to more robust and relevant organizing and advocacy work. In addition to equipping our community members with the knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to regularly engage with powerbrokers and decision-makers at all levels of society, we align, convene, and collaborate with like-minded organizations to advocate for laws and policies that benefit all communities. For example, more recently we celebrated with our partners in the Chicago Immigration Working Group that City Council voted to pass the Welcoming City Ordinance amendments that will ensure that the Chicago Police Department cannot collaborate with ICE on immigration operations. This is a huge victory for our communities after a 5-year effort and truly shows the power of collective organizing and advocacy to create positive change.
In the last year, the pandemic has forced organizations to shift how not only how they operate but where they focus their efforts. How has AAAJ's work shifted during the pandemic? What has the organization's response been to the escalation in hate crimes directed at the Asian community during the pandemic?
First, like many other organizations, we have shifted our entire team to working remotely until vaccinations are more widely available in Chicago. Although this slowed the speed of our 2020 Census outreach, our issue campaign work, and grassroots organizing, I am proud to say that our wonderful and creative organizing team still continued our KINETIC youth and our A Just Chi adult leaders base. Our work over the last year also included holding our first virtual Asian American Action Day with our Pan-Asian Voter Empowerment (PAVE) coalition partners, attended by Governor Pritzker and our Asian American state legislative caucus members, and launching our Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History (TEAACH) campaign, which will require Asian American history be taught in K-12 public schools, now that many free resources are now available.
With the uprisings that happened this past summer, we further committed to racial equity, fight against white supremacy, and support Black people’s struggle for justice and liberation with our racial equity pledge to our Asian American community.
Finally, in response to the racist COVID scapegoating and rise of anti-Asian hate incidents, which we anticipate will continue for the foreseeable future, we launched our Anti-hate Bystander Intervention Trainings, in partnership with Hollaback! and CAIR-Chicago. While there are no quick or easy fixes to the violence and dangers of white supremacy, we're very committed to equipping all community members, including allies, with simple de-escalation techniques so that we can decrease the chances of traumatic incidents and real physical harm.
Bystander Intervention Trainings - Advancing Justice-Chicago is a one-hour, interactive online training, where participants will: learn about the types of disrespect and dangers that Asian and Asian American folks are facing right now and throughout history — from microaggressions to violence; understand what to look for in scenarios and the positive impact that bystander intervention has on individuals and communities.
As we settle into 2021, what's on the horizon for AAAJ?
Our TEAACH campaign (HB 376) is full steam ahead this spring legislative session and our Anti-Hate Bystander Intervention Trainings and outreach continues, but we are also heavily involved with federal immigration reform advocacy, both with our Advancing Justice affiliates and other Value Our Families campaign partners and as an active Action Council member organization of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. In addition, we plan on being deeply engaged on both state and city redistricting processes, with the latter effort expected to result in Chicago's first-ever majority Asian American city ward provided accurate census data is available. Finally, we will continue to explore ways to support efforts by Black-led groups and coalitions who work on the issues of police accountability and racial justice, including the hard work of addressing anti-Blackness within our own communities.
Thank you Andy for taking the time to share with us the amazing work you and the organization are doing.
To learn more about Asian Americans Advancing Justice, visit them online at advancingjustice-chicago.org.