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11.04.2022

Asian Americans Condemn Deceitful, Racist Mailers from Stephen Miller-Led Group

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

CONTACT: Grace Pai (Executive Director) gpai@advancingjustice-chicago.org, Seong-Ah Cho (Organizing Director) scho@advancingjustice-chicago.org 

Asian Americans Condemn Deceitful, Racist Mailers from Stephen Miller-Led Group 

CHICAGO – As Asian Americans continue to be the fastest growing demographic in Illinois and across the country, a group led by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller is flooding the state with deceitful and racist mailers aimed at misleading and sowing fear in the Asian American community. 

The racist mailers were sent by the America First Legal Foundation, the conservative organization founded by former Trump advisor Stephen Miller. Miller has a long history of peddling racist hate and division. Miller was the architect behind the Trump administration’s family separation program, a brutally inhumane anti-immigrant policy which led to the widespread images of kids in cages that shocked the nation, and author of Trump’s widely condemned travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries.  

“Stephen Miller led the most xenophobic, anti-immigrant agenda imaginable under the Trump administration and has demonstrated time and time again that he does not care about Asian Americans,” said Grace Pai, Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago. “The fact that Miller directly contributed to stoking up violence and hatred against Asian Americans and other immigrants and is now attempting to displace that blame is clearly in bad faith. These mailers are blatantly racist fear-mongering in an attempt to mislead and scare Asian Americans and divide us from our fellow communities of color.” 

The mailers are part of a coordinated campaign by the America First Legal Foundation. Outside of Illinois, mailers have been received in Ohio, Arizona, Georgia, Virginia, California, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, New York, and Texas over the past week. Since its formation in 2021, the right-wing group has a long history of using divisive rhetoric and misinformation. 

“Asian American communities have a clear and shared stake in racial equity issues like affirmative action, immigration reform, affordable housing, and access to healthcare alongside Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and all marginalized communities,” said Seong-Ah Cho, Organizing Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago. “We will continue to educate our communities and fight together for policies that genuinely represent the interests of our diverse communities. We will not be deterred by those who wish to silence and divide us.” 

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Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago builds power through collective advocacy and organizing to achieve racial equity. Learn more at advancingjustice-chicago.org. 

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10.28.2022

Asian American Civil Rights Orgs: We Need Affirmative Action to Counter Systemic Racism in Education

October 28, 2022

For Immediate Release
CONTACT
Michelle Boykins(202) 296-2300, ext. 0144mboykins@advancingjustice-aajc.org
Vivin Qiang202-780-9327vqiang@advancingjustice-aajc.org

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Ahead of oral arguments before the Supreme Court in SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina on October 31, Asian Americans Advancing Justice is calling on the court to affirm the constitutional right to affirmative action, a long-held precedent that is still needed to counter systemic racism and white supremacy in our education systems and is supported by more than two-thirds of Asian Americans.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice, an affiliation of five independent Asian American civil rights organizations, issued the following statement:

“Let’s be clear about the motivations behind these cases: extremist strategist Edward Blum and his vast network of funders are pursuing a decades-long campaign to divide communities of color and strip away educational opportunities and voting rights from Black, Latino, Indigenous, and Asian communities – and deliberately attempting to use Asian American students and families as a racial wedge for their political gain.

“We know the truth. It is rampant throughout our history, whether it is the California law that permitted segregation of ‘children of Mongolian or Chinese descent’ until 1947 or all the ways systemic racism today has blocked many Southeast Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander students from accessing high quality K-12 and college education.

“As we wrote in our amicus brief, abandoning affirmative action and race-conscious admissions will undo the progress that has been hard fought across generations, and impedes the changes we still need to make quality education a reality for all students, regardless of their wealth, their family connections, or their race and ethnicity. We urge the court to uphold the constitutional right to affirmative action that has made education better for countless students, including Asian American students, for more than 40 years.”

Civil rights organizations including Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Legal Defense Fund, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and The Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights are united in our support for race-conscious admissions policies that improve access to education for all students. In August, the Advancing Justice affiliation filed two amicus curiae briefs, including one with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Lawyers for Civil Rights, and pro bono counsel Arnold & Porter on behalf of a multiracial group of alumni students of color at Harvard who served as amici-plus and presented evidence at trial in support of holistic admissions policies that consider the entirety of a student’s experiences, talents, and potential.

The second amicus curiae brief, written with pro bono counsel Ballard Spahr, was joined by 37 Asian American and Pacific Islander civil rights groups, advocacy organizations, professionals, and student organizations in support of race-conscious admissions and the enduring need for these programs to counter systemic racism and white supremacy in our education systems.

On Monday morning, many of these signatories will join students and community members from across the country to rally for affirmative action and race-conscious admissions on the Supreme Court steps. To find reaction panels and other post-oral arguments events and analysis, follow #DefendDiversity and #AffirmOpportunity on Twitter.

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10.19.2022

Personal Safety Alarms, Trainings Aim To Give Asian Residents Tools To Protect Themselves As Attacks Rise

Credit: ColinBoyle/Block Club Chicago. People walk through Chinatown Square on a summer day in Chinatown on July 15, 2021.

By

CHICAGO — Advocacy groups are offering Asian Chicagoans personal safety alarms and defense training amid a continued surge in anti-Asian hate crimes.

The Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community is providing more than 400 handheld safety alarms to Asian Chicagoans, giving them out at events and at tables set up in the community, said advocacy manager Vivian Zhang.

Many of the people taking advantage of the offer are older and use public transit or walk, Zhang said. People can pull a pin on the alarm so it makes a loud sound in a bid to scare away an attacker or alert others the user needs help.

The initiative comes as anti-Asian hate crimes in Chicago have risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, from two in 2020 to nine in 2021 and eight in 2022, according to police data. Similar upticks have been seen throughout the country.

Credit: Personal safety alarms. Colin Boyle/Block Club ChicagoA video last month showed two people attacking and robbing an older Asian man as he rode the Red Line. The fatal shooting of Woom Sing Tse, 71, in Chinatown in December sparked calls for more cameras, lights and longer-term violence prevention efforts in the neighborhood.

About 7 percent of Chicagoans are Asian, according to the Sun-Times.

Chicago has a large population of Asian Americans — but they don’t account for as much of the overall population as some coastal cities. That means hate crimes can fly under the radar and may be underreported, said Andrea Chu, the Midwest organizing manager at Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

“This violence against our communities is not over, and I don’t think it’ll be over anytime soon,” Chu said. “When you look at Islamophobia after 9/11, that violence didn’t go away. There’s a real impact on public safety from the anti-Chinese rhetoric from politicians, in terms of COVID and economic competition, that continues to take a toll.”

Asian Americans Advancing Justice hosts bystander intervention trainings over Zoom to prepare people if they witness a hate crime, Chu said. Local community groups are also doing outreach to Asian-American residents to encourage them to report hate crimes and are partnering with police to serve as translators during home visits, said Grace Chan McKibben, executive director of the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community.

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10.17.2022

Illinois students are getting their first broad exposure to Asian American history this year

WBEZA new state law requires teaching Asian American history. Some teachers have jumped in headfirst, while others are still preparing lessons.

By Susie An (WBEZ)

In a dimly lit room on Chicago’s North Side, teacher Zach Schroeder is introducing his eighth graders to an historical figure most students — and teachers — have never encountered before.

They’re learning about labor movements, and Schroeder wants to extend his students’ knowledge beyond the important work of Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association.

He cues up a video focused on Filipino workers in the 1960s and Filipino American labor organizer Larry Itliong, telling his students to be mindful of how Itliong’s “identity helped him be a powerful civic actor.”

Students then break into groups and talk about why the efforts of Filipino American farm workers aren’t as widely known, and the importance of merging their efforts with Mexican farm workers. This was all new for Aisling Panjwani, one of Schroeder’s students.

“I think it highlights a lot of stories that maybe weren’t as prominent that maybe need to be highlighted more,” the eighth grader says.

That’s a key goal of the TEAACH Act, or Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History, which requires Illinois schools for the first time this year to teach a unit of Asian American and Pacific Islander history. It’s meant to boost cross-cultural education for all students and advance racial equity. Some teachers have jumped in headfirst, while others are still preparing their lessons. The law says every public elementary and high school should include a unit of AAPI history, but local schools have the freedom to decide what that looks like.

WBEZ
Sixth graders in Oak Park this year are learning about Asian American history for the first time in their English class. Kate N. Grossman / WBEZ 

In his social studies and civics classroom, Schroeder is weaving Asian American history throughout the year, rather than only one unit.

“This lesson today, it talks about the labor struggle and how integral not just Asian Americans, but Latinx people, Mexican American people were together,” Shroeder said. “So I think it’s just natural to smooth it out throughout U.S. history.”

Schroeder said the more lenses you can add to history, the richer it becomes.

That’s true for educators as well. Smita Garg is a parent at Skinner North and helped lead teacher trainings with Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the group that helped get the TEAACH Act passed. Garg is Asian American and has a background in education, but this was a learning experience for her as well.

“I did not know this content,” she said. “So what I try to convey to teachers upfront in the sessions is, ‘It’s okay not to know. Let’s start there. Let’s give ourselves grace for what we don’t know, but also hold ourselves accountable for learning here on out.’ ”

Garg said she’s done trainings for entire school districts and has even had teachers from outside the state sign up. There are more workshops scheduled this fall, and there’s also free online resources that teachers can incorporate into their lessons for any grade level.

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