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? 

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.

In the face of escalating attacks on immigrant communities, the need for robust rapid response systems has never been more urgent. Recently, PrYSM (Providence Youth Student Movement) and AARW (Asian American Resource Workshop) shared their hard-earned lessons and strategies for building rapid response systems that support grassroots organizing and membership growth.

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.

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. 

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.

Recently, we invited Equality Labs, the only Dalit-led national organization organizing the Dalit diaspora in the United States and abroad, to share with other GAR members how casteism is deeply intertwined with classism. Although casteism affects at least 1.2 billion people, there is very little understanding of what it actually is and what’s at stake for the most politically, economically and socially vulnerable and oppressed groups in the South Asian diaspora.

Over two decades after 9/11, we are currently facing a rise of violence against Asians that have echoes of similar state and interpersonal violence. To share lessons that pan-Asian communities should be made aware of to build stronger fighting forces to combat hate violence, GAR hosted Lessons Learned Post-9/11: Combating Violence Against Asians, a peer exchange of over 50 participants, staff, members, and allies.

In our continual work to build a national network of grassroots organizations rooted in working-class Asian communities, GAR hosted a peer exchange of over 40 participants, staff, and members, from 15 of our member organizations. Building a Working Class Base gave space for folks to share tactics that worked in bringing in working-class members and strategize over struggles that we all faced. This organizing work is crucial as the working class must be the center of our movement work.

A year after the Gold Spa shooting in Atlanta, GAR hosted a gathering of 60 participants, staff and adult/youth members, from 15 grassroots organizing organizations of working-class Asian organizations. We Keep Us Safe presented the work that GAR member organizations have been undertaking to combat violence against and within Asian communities. The forum gave participants the opportunity to discuss more deeply progress and challenges to building community based responses that do not rely on police and carceral systems. You can listen here for a recording of the Building Lasting, Effective and Just Responses to Violence Against Asians presentations and discussions.