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. We will feel its devastating effects on our communities through historic and ongoing systemic political, economic, and social harms. As a national alliance of working-class, pan-Asian grassroots organizations, GAR is reminded of the urgency to push back against conservative forces that co-opt and use our communities as wedges against the rights and well-being of communities of color, including ourselves. We must continue to fight back.

A small, but vocal and growing, contingent of conservatives within Asian and Asian American communities have actively collaborated with white supremacist movements to deter the progress of our civil rights. Ignoring the role that class plays in Asian communities will keep us all at a disadvantage in proactively taking on the increasingly powerful right-wing and white supremacist forces. In these moments, we must remember that our work to build collective interest and solidarity with Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities is what will ultimately give us the power we need to win back our hard-earned rights.

We have and will continue to build grassroots organizing power and solidarity that addresses the everyday, material needs of working-class, pan-Asian, immigrant and refugee communities. The organizations in our alliance have been building and cultivating working-class bases for decades. By continuing this decades-long organizing, we move towards a world where our working-class immigrant and refugee communities have dignity, safety, and justice.