Advancing Justice Affiliation
With Asian Americans Advancing Justice affiliate partners in Atlanta, Chicago, Southern California, 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 continues its national voting rights initiative, launched in 2020, to advance litigation, advocacy, and organizing efforts to protect the right to vote and increase immigrant communities’ civic participation. This year, we supported local grassroots organizations to reach out to and mobilize AAPI voters to register and vote, and to counter widespread voter suppression and misinformation, we provided trainings to inform voters of their rights, despite unfriendly changes in laws and policies. Building on record AAPI participation in Census 2020, we supported efforts to engage community members in numerous states to participate in state and local redistricting efforts to advocate for fairer districts and opportunities for better representation of AAPI communities.
We also supported regional and state poll monitoring programs, including pilot efforts to promote increased accountability in local jurisdictions. Representing AAPI voters and our Atlanta affiliate, and with affiliate and pro bono counsel, we are leading a legal fight in federal court against a sweeping anti-voting law, SB 202, in Georgia. We support groups in Texas, where voting rights are under attack or where voter suppression harms AAPI voters and look to further collaboration in other states, including Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and others. Affiliates are also advocating for federal legislation, the Expanding the VOTE Act, to improve language access.
The affiliation also filed amicus briefs in the Supreme Court and circuit courts across the country, including in support of race-conscious college admissions, against unconstitutional state surveillance against Muslim and Black communities, and against racist laws that criminalize immigrants.
In 2022, we also redistributed $3 million to 68 organizations spanning 15 states, as well as $600,000 to the Emergency Victims and Survivors Fund in Georgia. As some of the largest organizations led by and serving Asian American communities, we were fortunate to receive an influx of one-time donations in 2021. While we are deeply appreciative of this support, we also know that our work to build a more just world is made possible through partnerships, including with many organizations that have not received the same amount of support from donors.
The organizations that received these redistributed funds serve a wide range of communities and focus on many different issues, including racial justice, community safety, gender-based violence response, economic security, immigrant rights, and voting rights, among others. We hope this funding decision also continues to encourage our donors and others to support these partners’ crucial work and ask questions about the groups and places that need more support.
Learn more about the Asian Americans Advancing Justice affiliation.
Race-conscious admissions programs have opened the doors to higher education for AAPIs, as they have for other communities of color. (Photo by Allison G. Lee)
Asian American Leaders Table
Since 2020, ALC has convened a 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.
This past year, the Asian American Leaders Table came together to honor the anniversaries of the Atlanta and Indianapolis shootings, held a series of healing circles for Table members and their staff, and continued conversations and co-learning sessions to respond to incidents of anti-Asian hate with community-led solutions. The Table also started a messaging research project with We Make the Future to strengthen the application of the race-class narrative among base and persuadable Asian American and Pacific Islander community members and voters. For longer-term sustainability, the Table has established an Advisory Council that will help guide our collective strategic direction for the Table and its members.
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 three 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 2022, the coalition lifted up stories of impacted immigrants who have been separated from their families due to visa backlogs; expanded membership to demonstrate the widespread support for fixing the U.S. family-based immigration system, and engaged in actions such as letter-writing campaigns and digital town halls to urge members of Congress to support the group’s policy recommendations. The coalition’s policy priorities include legislative solutions to recapture the 500,000 unused visas from fiscal years 1992 to 2021, ensure visa unused visa numbers automatically roll over to the next fiscal year, and provide green cards to around 40,000 diversity visa program lottery winners who did not or were not able to receive them due to the Trump administration’s immigration bans.
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’ve continued to advocate for the No BAN Act and for the Biden administration to create a fair and effective process to reopen and reconsider visa applications from thousands of people who were denied family reunification, jobs and educational opportunities, and medical treatment as a result of the Muslim & African Bans.
Earlier this year, coalition members and community members celebrated a federal court ruling in Pars Equality Center, et. al. v. Pompeo, et. al. that found the Biden administration must fully undo the harms of the Bans. As a result of the ruling, the U.S. government has been ordered to quickly remedy the lasting harms of the Bans with a clear and legitimate process, and we continue to participate in the court-mandated meet and confer process to resolve how the government will provide these remedies for all impacted people.
The No Muslim Ban Ever coalition represents over 100 Muslim and immigrant rights groups.
Cross-Country Power Building Partnerships
A period of reckoning for AAPIs, with the unprecedented turnout of AAPIs in elections in Arizona and Georgia, we have been responding to every challenge and opportunity. We recognize the growing importance of our communities as critical coalition members within the emerging new majority of voters alongside Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and young voters. In addition, we believe that the violence and harms that AAPI communities experience cannot be understood and addressed separately from the hate violence other communities experience. The path to community safety, justice, and equity must be grounded in multi-racial solidarity. In our cross-country power building efforts, we are building solidarity to address existing inequities and fractures and engaging AAPI communities toward shared values and vision, especially in Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Texas where there are growing AAPI communities. As we have been doing since our founding, we are building from the ground up–investing resources, strengthening infrastructure, and diversifying strategies–through long-term sustained engagement towards a collective mission.