Movement Mistakes and Lessons Learned with Cathy Dang

With ongoing violence and our current political climate, 2024 is a challenging year for our movement. To support our network, GAR is facilitating a series of programs called Movement Mistakes & Lessons Learned.

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.

Cathy emphasized how we must have the utmost clarity in our membership structure, as well as discipline in doing consistent political education across members, leaders, and organizing staff. If we do not have strong political education, we risk losing our communities to misinformation, apathy, or misguided political agendas.

Cathy also reminded us that we refuse to turn away from each other, even when the work gets hard! We know the path to our collective freedom needs each of us, fully present and committed.