UPDATES
Organizing Protects Us
Like you, we are reeling from Trump winning the presidential election and what this means for so many communities, including our working-class pan-Asian communities. Building resilience and grit at the grassroots is what will allow our communities to survive and defeat Trump 2.0 - and we need you to win.
GAR Statement on November 2024 Elections: The Fight for Democracy Goes Beyond Ballots
GAR members have always worked diligently to make sure our world is one where our working-class communities have dignity, safety, and justice. As we approach election day, we reaffirm our commitment to organizing working-class communities. The fight for a multiracial democracy must extend beyond just elections; it requires sustained grassroots organizing, coalition-building, and community engagement to create a better world for us all.
Becoming More Leaderfull, Healthy & Sustainable Organizations
A key part to sustainable organizing is making sure that we have strong leadership development and transitions at all levels of the organization: members to leaders, leaders to organizers, organizers to directors and executive directors. Organizational development and infrastructure can feel daunting, but we have so much that we can learn from one another! Vivian from APEN and Suon from PrYSM shared how the lessons their organizations have learned around leadership development and transitions.
Congratulations to our Lotus & Rice Fund Recipients
We’re excited to announce API Civic Engagement (ACE) Collaborative, SEAC Village, AYPAL, Asian Americans United (AAU), Arab American Action Network (AAAN), and Empowering Marginalized Asian Communities (EMAC) as the recipients of our Lotus & Rice Fund!
Our Lotus and Rice Fund allows us to regrant $50,000 a year for three years to five GAR member organizations. We hope that this funding allows your organization to sustain your local organizing of working-class, Asian communities.
Building Class Solidarity (recording included)
Earlier this week, we facilitated Building Class Solidarity, our political education workshop on contending with Right-wing forces. We shared trends we have observed amongst GAR membership about who are the emerging Right-wing forces in our Asian communities. The most effective strategy to contend with Right-wing forces is to organize working-class interests across every sector.
Build the Path Towards Working Class Power
We are excited to announce an important moment in our journey: the launch of Grassroots Asians Rising’s “Building the Path to Working Class Power” recurring donor campaign. Our ambitious goal is to recruit 24 new sustainers who will play a pivotal role in amplifying our efforts. In the year 2024, we want to double down on the need to invest and organize beyond election to election long-term.
There are No Shortcuts to Organizing
How can we build grassroots organizations with working-class membership bases? We’re not starting from scratch! Our movements have long histories, and with that, we’ve learned lessons from so many movement mistakes, especially when it comes to building working-class bases and leadership development processes.
GAR Membership Gathering in Chicago on Contending with Right-wing Forces
This Gathering included sessions on identifying patterns that multiple Right-wing forces share and strategizing ways to make sure we keep ourselves and our communities safe. Leaders and organizers from across the nation shared how building strong working-class, pan-Asian bases has been crucial in contending Right-wing forces in their local communities.
Movement Mistakes and Lessons Learned with Cathy Dang
This month, we invited Cathy Dang, former Executive Director of CAAAV from 2013-2018 and the current National Co-Director at GAR. Cathy shared lessons from overseeing CAAAV during the upsurge of Chinese Right-Wing forces in defense of former NYPD officer Peter Liang in the killing of Akai Gurley. Conservative forces took advantage of this moment to wedge Asian communities against other communities of color on issues of police accountability and racial justice.
How Our Movement Grew in 2023 and What Comes Next
In 2023, GAR brought together dozens/hundreds of grassroots organizers across the country to strengthen our working-class, pan-Asian movement. With GAR’s strong infrastructure - including people like you - our member organizations are fearlessly leading and organizing to win real changes for neighborhoods, cities, and states across our nation. We’re excited to share a little more about our accomplishments in 2023.
This Giving Tuesday, Join us to Build a Stronger Movement
Following our launch of the TRANSLATED Asian American Racial Justice Toolkit into 11 Asian languages, many of our member organizations will be using this toolkit to hold rigorous, in-language workshops with their working-class memberships. But we need your support to make it happen: Donate today to our membership who are leading the way with their commitment to in-language political education.
Download our Pan-Asian Solidarity for Palestine Workshop
Last month, Grassroots Asians Rising (GAR) facilitated a discussion with our member organizations to brainstorm what resources are needed in order to reach their working-class bases and build pan-Asian solidarity for Palestine. Many GAR organizers, especially those leading East Asian and Southeast Asian organizations, are struggling to speak with their bases about what is happening in Palestine and Israel, how Zionism impedes our movements, and how we can connect the Palestinian struggle abroad to our day-to-day struggles in the US.
We Translated the Asian American Racial Justice Toolkit
We’re excited to announce the launch of the TRANSLATED Asian American Racial Justice Toolkit into 11 Asian languages, including Hindi, Nepali, Tagalog, Bangla, Korean, Hmong, Chinese, Arabic, Punjabi, Vietnamese, and Khmer!
Become a Lotus & Rice Sustainer
Our movement needs resources to grow! And so, we are excited to announce that today is GAR’s launch of our 🪷 Lotus and Rice Sustainer Campaign 🌾 to recruit 20 sustainers to make an average monthly donation of $25 in order to raise $6,000. Will you join the movement by giving monthly to support this work?
Celebrating our 2023 National Convening
A couple weeks ago, GAR held Lotus and Rice: Growing the Pan-Asian, Working-Class Ecosystem, our National Convening, in Los Angeles, CA! We brought together 32 grassroots organizations to boost our collective capacity to improve the lives of working-class pan-Asian communities across the United States.
GAR at NEA Board Meeting
Last month, our Co-National Director Roksana Mun was the 2023 National Education Association Board’s AAPI Observance speaker. She spoke to their community of 200+ union leaders convening for the NEA’s quarterly board meeting, including the entire NEA Board of Directors and Executive Officers from across the country.
June 2023: Meet our Newest GAR Members
With our expanding members, we are building a pan-Asian, working-class organizing ecosystem across the United States together. We’re excited for Woori Juntos, FAJ, CA HNSC, and HANA Center to join all our membership at our upcoming National Convening next month!
GAR Statement on Affirmative Action Decision
Grassroots Asians Rising (GAR) condemns the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action as unconstitutional in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina. The court’s decisions will have devastating consequences on working-class Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Asian students to gain access to higher educational opportunities.
Our 2023 Convening Theme: Lotus & Rice
“Lotus and Rice,” the theme of our Convening, is an evolution of the popular slogan "bread for all, and roses too" which rallied the women’s and workers’ rights movements in the early 1900s. Lotus and rice are both plants found, appreciated, and eaten throughout the pan-Asian diaspora.
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