Advancing Justice Affiliation
With Asian Americans Advancing Justice affiliate partners in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., we organize and elevate national campaigns, litigation strategies, and community outreach programs that expand and protect civil and human rights for Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, immigrants, and refugees.
The Advancing Justice affiliation is advancing legal, advocacy, and organizing efforts to protect the right to vote and increase AAPI civic participation. We galvanized AAPIs to be counted in Census 2020, and helped mobilize record numbers of voters to register and turn out at the polls in recent years. We also support grassroots groups around the country to prepare for upcoming electoral battles. On behalf of AAPI voters, we are in the thick of the legal fight in federal court against sweeping anti-voting laws in Georgia. Simultaneously, we work to organize in other states where voting rights are under attack or where voter suppression is burdening AAPI voters.
As extremist strategists and politicians organize to deny Black, Latine, Asian, and other communities of color equal voting rights and educational opportunities, the affiliation is also supporting litigation that defends and expands opportunities for low-income students of color, including support for race-conscious admissions and affirmative action.
In 2020 and 2021, affiliation partners also trained over 100,000 people in bystander intervention, including more than 15,000 people in the Bay Area. In partnership with Right to Be (formerly Hollaback!), these trainings help community members, public agencies, and other nonprofit organizations safely intervene when they witness xenophobic harassment and other hate incidents, and support engagement with non-punitive safety and accountability practices.
Learn more about the Asian Americans Advancing Justice affiliation.
Asian American Leaders Table
The Asian American Leaders Table (AALT) began with a meeting in May 2020 when leaders from 40 organizations came together to discuss rising anti-Asian hate within the context of a global pandemic and virulent anti-China rhetoric. The meeting was hosted by ALC Executive Director Aarti Kohli and Helen Zia, an author and activist, and facilitated by Deepa Iyer. The group met to discuss potential scenarios and responses. These scenarios included: 1) an act of mass hate violence at Chinese church; 2) expansion of the Muslim and African Bans and immigration bans; 3) national security programs that profile and target Asian Americans; and 4) electoral strategy that incites widespread anti-China rhetoric and action. A recommendation emerged from the initial conversation to create a national tale with the goal of eliminating COVID-19-related interpersonal and state racism targeting Asian American communities.
Since then, ALC has convened this table of over 60 community serving organizations to anticipate threats, develop and execute rapid response plans, and create sustained national infrastructure for deeper solidarity within AAPI communities and with other communities of color. In 2020 and 2021, table members created several field-facing projects, including:
- a policy guide to anti-Asian hate violence that was published in Bangla, Chinese, English, Hindi, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Urdu;
- SolidarityStories.org to guide conversations in schools and community gatherings;
- a range of rapid response resources to help grassroots organizations engage policymakers, media, and other stakeholders; and
- a series of co-learning sessions on co-liberation; applying community-based policies to lived violence; past and current advocacy around hate crimes law and policy; the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and its role in the creating systems that target and harm AMEMSA and other Asian American communities; and restorative justice responses to harm and hate violence in our communities.
National Coalitions
Value Our Families: With Church World Service and the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC), the Advancing Justice affiliation convenes the Value Our Families campaign to promote a U.S. immigration system informed by love, empathy, and justice. Over the past two years, the campaign has rejected attacks and proposed harmful changes to our current family-based immigration system through grassroots mobilization, advocacy, and strategic communications efforts.
In 2021, Value Our Families successfully advocated for the reversal of harmful policies enacted by the Trump Administration. The coalition’s longtime efforts to advance and promote the Reuniting Families Act, which would reduce family immigration visa backlogs and promote humane and timely reunification of immigrant families, also resulted in the inclusion of the provisions of this legislation in President Biden’s immigration proposal and the accompanying legislation introduced in Congress.
No Muslim Ban Ever: We are proud to be one of four core organizations leading the No Muslim Ban Ever coalition, which represents over 100 Muslim and immigrant rights groups. Along with CAIR-SFBA, MPower Change, and the National Immigration Law Center, we met with the Biden transition team and sent them recommendations on what a full repeal should look like. As part of the coalition, we worked to challenge President Trump’s white supremacist agenda in national conversation, and work in solidarity with communities of color who have been harmed by racism and xenophobia in U.S. federal policies.
President Biden signed an executive order to overturn the Muslim and African Bans in his first few days in office, in part due to the coalition’s tireless advocacy and work to bring light to the stories of impacted individuals. Now, our fight continues to support those who were harmed by the Bans, and to make sure a horrific policy like this and all others that racially profile Black and AMEMSA communities does not happen again. Read our full list of recommendations in a 2021 memo to the Biden Administration and learn more about the No BAN Act.