I joined Grassroots Asians Rising as the Membership Director in May to learn from and strengthen the incredible work of our 34 member organizations. In just seven months, I’ve been energized by the wisdom, resilience, and shared political vision across our network. Our power is real—and it’s growing. Will you invest in GAR’s power-building work? 

I’m a monthly donor to GAR not just because I was trained at a GAR member organization, but because I have seen the impact of GAR’s work—wins across the country, like defeating corporate sports arenas that threaten to destroy our homes, securing better working conditions and wages across industries, and defending our immigrant and refugee neighbors from ICE. Join me in investing in GAR’s vital mission to empower working-class communities to dream, organize, and lead us all to a world of dignity, safety, and justice.

As 2025 draws to a close, the challenges we face are clear. The politics of fear and division have escalated into concrete attacks on our communities from the erosion of social safety nets to the targeted attacks on immigrants and refugees. In this climate, building working-class power is not just important; it is urgent.

This Giving Tuesday, I’m reaching out with gratitude and urgency. Today, I need your help to fortify the power of working-class Asian communities by making a gift to Grassroots Asians Rising: will you make a gift to protect and expand the power of our working-class Asian communities? GAR exists because of people like you who believe in justice, equity, and the power of grassroots movements. 

In 2026, GAR will host our seventh annual National Convening - Lotus & Rice: Reclaiming Our Organizing. For the past decade, GAR has hosted convenings to bring together organizers to create a national strategy for building working-class pan-Asian power. Will you help us brings our members together to strategize, so that we can really make change on a national level?

The recent political energy in New York, including Zohran Mamdani's election as Mayor, didn't come from nowhere. Lasting change has taken neighbors talking to neighbors, families in apartment buildings finding their collective voice, and communities deciding, block by block, to shape their own futures. Change does not start with elections, but with the year-round work of relationship-building and empowering everyday people. 

Over my ten years with GAR–from my time on the Coordinating Committee and staff–I have countless cherished memories. GAR is held together by the trust of tight-knit comrades who have gained alignment and clarity through unity, struggle, unity. This is how GAR was built, and it is how GAR will continue to be.

After four years of transformative leadership, Cathy Dang will be transitioning out of her role as Co-Director of Grassroots Asians Rising. Cathy has been instrumental in shaping GAR since its founding—first as Executive Director of CAAAV in New York City since 2013, and later as Co-Director since 2021, where she strengthened our infrastructure, resources, and organizational culture.

In today’s political climate, right-wing strategists have exploited public safety concerns, economic instability, and the pandemic to recruit small business owners into an increasingly conservative agenda. But small businesses are vital hubs in our communities where people work, shop, play, and live. Earlier this month, GAR invited our member organizations to grapple with a critical question: How can we organize small business owners to align their interests with our working-class communities? 

We’ve seen these tactics before in the US and abroad: when ICE was first formed as a part of the “War on Terror” to surveil and harass AMEMSA communities, in the Philippines under Martial Law, in Korea under corrupt political leaders. As working-class Asian people in the US, we are too familiar with how authoritarian regimes rose to power through the same playbook in our own homelands: mass arrests, militarized policing, propaganda that dehumanizes dissent, and the deliberate erasure of state violence. 

As GAR's Membership Director, Sammie will help shape our membership's shared political vision, strengthen our programs, and unite our members and allies in the fight for working-class justice. Sammie brings a deep commitment to grassroots organizing and movement building that will help us build power for our power!

In today’s political landscape, many people across class backgrounds are eager to engage in movement work. But channeling that energy in a way that truly centers working-class communities requires intentionality. How do we avoid the pitfalls of mixed-class membership organizing while still building working-class solidarity? Two GAR members, CAAAV and Lavender Phoenix, have grappled with these questions in their own work.

GAR is looking for a Membership Manager or Membership Director to join our team! This new position would drive the development of a shared political vision for GAR rooted in grassroots organizing and movement building and oversee all of GAR’s programs and membership development.

My name is Julia Yang-Winkenbach, and I have been a proud donor to Grassroots Asians Rising (GAR), since 2022. I donate because I believe that we have a responsibility to help build the power of working-class pan-Asian communities. I’m deeply committed to creating a world where our people—our families, friends, and neighbors—can live with dignity, safety, and justice.

GAR is a critical piece of building a movement against fascism that brings working class, Pan-Asian communities to the front, and into the fold.  At a time when authoritarianism is rising, GAR is a leader in strategizing around how to address the growing Asian right-wing forces and galvanizing communities to join us in this fight. 

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 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. 

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.