I currently work as the Youth Organizer at NCAAT (North Carolina Asian Americans Together). My role is to support the efforts of our Youth team in educating and empowering Asian American youth in North Carolina. In particular, I oversee our Youth Ambassadors program, a paid volunteer program for young Asian Americans to engage in and bring awareness to NCAAT’s work.

On the worst days, being Korean American brings up a lot of complicated emotions that I channel into grace, empathy, and kindness for others who also feel like outsiders wherever they go.  On the best days, pride and gratitude for my identity as a child of Korean immigrants (now American citizens) and as a third-culture kid drives my passion for action and service. The oppression I face and the privileges I have as a Korean American woman is something I think about very seriously and it impacts the way that I move through my work.

Many young AAPI voters tell me about their passion for environmental justice, healthcare access, and racial justice. I think the societal and cultural context speaks for itself and a lot of what young AAPIs are trying to solve are the issues that they see around them and online. They’ve been handed a lot of problems that they didn’t ask for. I think especially recently with the recent attention on anti-Asian violence, a lot of them have been reflecting on their place in American society and what it means to be Asian American.

Since we are an Asian American organization, within our space at NCAAT, we definitely see more diverse representation of AAPIs. However, not every ethnic or identity group is always represented and outside of our own Asian American spaces, it is incredibly difficult to find AAPIs in the broader nonprofit and advocacy space. It makes us that much more cognizant of doing everything we can to include and uplift voices outside of our own. It is definitely uncomfortable, but it pushes us to keep going because we know how much work there is still left to be done.

As I joined the organization after the elections, my part in the huge increase in AAPI voters showing up to the polls last cycle is limited to my own ballot and my role as poll worker. I think one big factor for this great AAPI turnout was the incredible work and effort that nonprofits and organizations all over the nation took to educate our communities and stir up their political interest. Secondly, more Asian immigrants who came over in the influx of Asian immigrants in the last two decades have become citizens and their children are growing up.  These voters know that they have a voice and they’re going to make it heard. 

For a little over a year, I have been organizing with MOVE Texas and am coming up on the 1 year anniversary of starting a chapter of the nonprofit at my University, Texas A&M. We have since then led a successful GOTV initiative on our campus and surrounding Brazos county area, have recruited active members involved in our community such as climate change lobbying and phone/text banking, expanded to a fully VDR trained officer team, and have established our presence as a student organization on one of the largest college campuses in the country. I personally have also served as a poll worker during a presidential election year and have testified in the Texas Senate this past February in front of the redistricting committee against gerrymandering. I seek to contribute as an individual and on behalf of the chapter I started at my university to broaden the impact of civic engagement and progressive policy advocacy in my community as much as I can.

Identifying as a first generation Asian American has definitely played a role in my organizing, especially on my college campus. It is an interesting dynamic however, in being mixed race and not necessarily looking of Asian descent. I am half South Indian however, I have been mistaken to be of many different ethnicities, usually not of Asian heritage. It makes it hard to stay tied to my very prevalent Indian culture that I grew up with and feel as if the community supports me back. However, it has made me extremely self aware in the perceptions and preconceived notions that can be made about peoples’ identities and experiences. It constantly plays a role in organizing in that I attempt to create the most inclusive and safe spaces, even if it isn’t something that is considered “normal”. Although not easy, I believe that my identity has given me a unique insight that I am now proud to carry into my organizing work.

Some of the most important issues are recognition and awareness, both for the civic engagement process and simply representation of our leaders from the AAPI community, which there is a great lack of. Personally, seeing representation in our leaders is so empowering as it gives me hope that I too have the ability to pursue the things I am passionate about and be able to uplift underrepresented communities.

Going to a PWI, I would have been inclined even six months from now, to say that there is definitely not. For the most part this holds true, but in collaborating with the Asian President’s Council, a student organization at my school, I have seen that there is a significant dynamic and diverse AAPI community that has passions and needs that must be addressed. The biggest challenge has been proving ourselves to be a prominent demographic on campus, but it has also given me the great opportunity to meet so many passionate and hardworking AAPI student leaders who strive to make real change in our community. I also am a Student Senator at my University, who ran as a RepresentAsian candidate. Part of my mission is to dedicate my work to representing the AAPI student body and this translates to the lens in which I organize with my nonprofit work.

The common theme especially in this youngest voting generation is the dynamic need for change. In the AAPI youth community, our awareness of the lack of representation in our elected officials and policies with a general disregard for BIPOC communities has really led to a resurgence in our voter turnout. This, in combination with the recent rise of Anti-Asian hate crimes across the country has made the push to make our voices heard that much more imperative through civic engagement.

I organize my community by encouraging fellow young API individuals to turn out to discuss what issues they most care about.

As a first-generation immigrant, my heritage and identity play a considerable role in my work. Having this experience helps me better understand what members of the API community need.

When speaking with young voters, I notice many of them, myself included, have concerns about the amount of representation API individuals get in media and government.

Representation for the API community has been steadily growing, and there has been a noticeable increase in the number of young API individuals who turn up to public events. The challenge we are now facing to continue fostering the growth of the API community is there is a separation in the different Asian communities, especially with older members.

I would attribute the jump in API voter turnout last cycle to better voter education. Many API organizations are doing their best to get people registered and understand the importance of their vote and what it means for our community.

Throughout college, I was an active member of the Asian Desi Pacific Islander Coalition (ADPAC) on campus. That was what allowed me to be part of a community of other like minded Asian-Americans interested in understanding social justice, voting rights, and the cultural issues that we face as a collective community in the US. After graduating, I saw working for MOVE as an opportunity to continue those discussions and activism beyond my immediate community and work in collaboration with other communities to ensure we were building a better Texas!

I come from a family of organizers, educators, and artists, so activism has always been a huge part of my identity. The women in my family have been vocal advocates for social justice causes in India for generations and being the first generation of women in my family to be in America affords me an entirely different privilege in the organizing space. I am able to work in an intersectional capacity where I am not just uplifting those that are like me, but all other communities that face challenges in the US, but specifically Texas. Working closely with Black, Latinx, Indigineous, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized communities has instilled a stronger sense of solidarity with the causes I have always advocated for within my own community.

Many young AAPI are not politically active and that unfortunately often translates at the polls. They are usually not as engaged because they feel that the issues don’t apply or don’t matter to them, but that’s definitely not true. When I would register AAPI students to vote on campus I would focus on highlighting issues around immigration, education, and healthcare, as those are the areas that often affect the AAPI community most. All of those issues matter to me deeply, but I also view criminal justice reform and climate change as extremely pressing issues in the US that do affect the AAPI community more than they would normally think. Bringing those issues to their attention also helps get young AAPI voters engaged and active in politics.

Unfortunately, I would say there really is not a lot of AAPI representation in the communities I organize in. Beyond the AAPI coalitions I am part of, the participation of AAPI individuals in the general organizing sphere is often limited. As a result, I am sometimes one of the only ones representing us in these spaces. That is a challenge at times because AAPI issues are not then brought to the forefront of discussions and our community also cannot be as engaged with the intersectional ways in which social justice can work in a state as diverse as Texas. However, being one of the few AAPI individuals in a space that has mostly individuals from other marginalized communities has given me an incredible perspective on how I can use my voice to uplift theirs. I love being part of diverse organizing efforts because I am constantly learning so much from the folks in those communities and I am always glad to be part of anything that will bring BIPOC or LGBTQ+ voices forward.

I believe the work MOVE did had a huge impact on bringing young people of all communities to the polls! I do think that the increase of participation from the AAPI community, specifically young voters, was partly due to an increase in social media activism and the spread of resources. That had a huge impact for many young people this election and I think it really helped bring young people into the political sphere in a way that made these issues approachable for them.

I am the Youth Engagement Coordinator at North Carolina Asian Americans Together. I develop and execute much of our programming from monthly workshops that help educate, engage, and uplift high school and college aged Asian American youth to specific education and skill-building opportunities like our Youth Leadership Institute for high school students. I will also be overseeing our internship program which is a paid part-time internship through NCAAT that gives young people the chance to develop their skills and experiences in community engagement, communications, youth organizing, and voter engagement & advocacy in the context of Asian American social justice work. 

As someone of Bangladeshi descent, I think a lot about liberation struggles. Bangladesh gained independence in 1971 through a Liberation War after surviving a brutality of partition and a genocide by the Pakistani army. The politics of postcolonial states are complex and troubling, but these resistance movements give me hope in the global fight against oppression.
Admittedly, it can be difficult navigating an identity that has next to no visibility. But I have taken that space to find my own way, lean into a process of perpetual learning, and find community and recognition in people whose struggles are different from but connected to my own.

A lot of young Asian Americans that we work with have told me about their desire to be in solidarity with other communities of color in working towards racial justice, their passion for environmental justice, and their broader hope for a more socially just world.

Personally, I am deeply invested in racial justice, which to me must also include internationalism, anti-imperialism, and anti-colonialism. More than anything, I wish to see a world where all of us can be safe, have our needs met, and thrive. 

NCAAT works primarily within the Asian American community. I think this allows us to really organize and strategize with an Asian Americans base in mind. We’re given the space to think about our language barriers, our different cultural issues, our unique immigration stories and challenges, disparities within our communities, and how data collection impacts our community members. It’s really beautiful and exciting to have the time and resources to do that. At the same time, it can be intense to feel like one of the only groups doing this work, so the goal is to definitely see more Asian Americans take up all kinds of organizing work.

I am a more recent addition to the NCAAT team, so I was not involved in NCAAT’s brilliant GOTV efforts. However, I am still incredibly proud of the work that our staff members were able to do in helping push those numbers up. I think a lot of non-profit workers and community organizers have really committed to the long-term work of political education and base-building within our communities, and it shows!