SEARAC and EPIC | Report on COVID-19’s Impact on NHPI/SAA Youth Mental Health This report was written in collaboration with researches from Illinois and Maryland whose work focuses on racially marginalized groups and the Asian American Pacific Islander Coalition Helping Achieve Racial and Gender Equality (AAPI CHARGE), which includes AAPI Civic Engagement Fund grantees Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC) and Khmer Girls in Action. Voices Unheard highlights the experiences of more than 200 respondents and focuses on Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) and Southeast Asian American (SEAA) youth. The report touches on the pandemic’s effect on mental wellness, the importance of culturally appropriate mental health support, and Southeast Asia Resource Action Center’s (SEARAC) recommendations to reduce barriers to mental healthcare in California. In addition, EPIC and SEARAC also launched fact sheets highlighting mental health research on Southeast Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander youth. These are available in eight languages including English, Hmong, Khmer, Lao, Mien, Samoan, Tongan, and Vietnamese. SEARAC-Voice-Unheard-2023-InteractiveDownload
FWD.us Education Fund | Interactive Report This report is the result of months of qualitative and quantitative research on the effect of five years of reforms, the ongoing drivers of Oklahoma’s stubbornly high incarceration rates, and the personal stories of people who have been impacted by the criminal justice system. FWD.us and its partners in Oklahoma conducted interviews and focus groups with nearly 100 practitioners, experts, advocates, and directly impacted people, reviewed dozens of written submissions from currently incarcerated people, and analyzed several years of local and state corrections data as part of this research. Please view this interactive report here.
UCLA & AAPI Data | The Post-Pandemic Agenda for Community Well-being among AANHPI in CA The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AA and NHPIs) in many ways — through economic hardship, negative health outcomes, and rising incidents of hate and violence. The pandemic also exposed fissures and challenges facing Asian Americans and NHPIs that were already deep-rooted in California. This report, which builds upon an earlier report released in June 2022, aims to identify any changes in accessing services before and after the onset of COVID in 2019 and 2021, respectively, and to take a closer look at the challenges that AA and NHPI communities face in the post-COVID period, including anxieties associated with gun violence and experiences with hate and discrimination. Authors examine data from the 2019 and 2021 1-year American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) and the 2018-2021 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), including a 15-minute follow-on survey for 2021 CHIS AAPI respondents to identify trends in social service utilization and gaps in accessing health, mental health, and social services for AA and NHPI communities in California. View the a summary of the report’s major findings and the report in its entirety at this link.
Behind Closed Doors | Part 2 This four-part webinar series took place from December 2022 to March 2023. It was hosted by the USC Price School and its Center for Inclusive Democracy, the California Black Freedom Fund, the Latino Community Foundation, and the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund. Part two of these moderated sessions explored the entrenchment of racism in U.S. politics, and its impact on political power and representation in communities. Titled “Behind Closed Doors,” these sessions served as a public space for open and challenging conversations examining the nation’s entrenched relationship between racism and politics, a situation recently brought further into the spotlight by the secret recording of a meeting of Los Angeles City Council members making racist remarks. Watch the full video below, or click here to watch the webinar highlights. Moderator: Mindy Romero, Founder and Director, Center for Inclusive Democracy, USC Price Panelists: Claire Jean Kim, Professor, Political Science School of Social Sciences, UCI Gloria Medina, Executive Director, Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) Tracie Stafford, Vice-Chair, Northern California, California Democratic Party Black Caucus Executive Board; Founder and CEO, Stafford Consulting Group, LLC
ATJ | The Deciding Margin: How AAPI Voters Will Shape the Future of Texas Recognizing the potential power of AAPI voters – the fastest-growing electorate in the country – Asian Texans for Justice (ATJ) commissioned a polling project, the first of its kind from a Texas-based AAPI organization, designed to better understand AAPI voters’ political views and policy preferences. Given the size of the Texas AAPI population as the third highest nationally, this project is also an opportunity to elevate the profile of AAPI voters across the United States. In summer 2022, 2700 likely Texas voters, of which 660 were AAPI voters, in the November 2022 midterm election were surveyed by Change Research, an organization with the mission to provide polling and strategy to organizations and campaigns that share our vision for a more humane, scientific, and just world. Unless otherwise noted, the findings in this report are based on the polling data from Change Research. The purpose of this report is to provide insights from that poll to better inform political candidates, policymakers, organizers, media sources, and the general public about AAPI voters and the importance they play in Texas policy and politics. The data are clear: AAPI voters in Texas are diverse, younger than the general population, dissatisfied with their current representation, and motivated to vote. Read the report below, and access the one pager, poll topline overview, and crosstabs at this link. ATJ_TheDecidingMargin_FINALDownload
MAF | Abolitionist V. Reforms Tool The Muslim Abolitionist Futures (MAF) Network is working towards building a world where we all live with dignity, freedom and justice. MAF’s goal is to abolish the “Global War on Terror (GWOT).” GWOT is a system of death and destruction that exists through policies, programs, and laws that target Muslim communities, communities racialized as Muslim, and more broadly Black and Brown communities targeted under the false guise of national security. This tool was developed by the Muslim Abolitionist Futures Network’s Abolition and Policy Working Group that is led by Muslims for Just Futures. Muslim Abolitionist Futures is a network of grassroots organizations across the country, and is co-anchored by Muslims for Just Futures, Vigilant Love, HEART Women & Girls, and Queer Crescent. The goal of this tool is to support organizations, collectives, groups, and community members committed to moving with abolitionist values in their policy advocacy efforts. The intention is to support groups and community members discern the type of policies that expand and further entrench the Global War on Terror, and the type of policies that can move us toward its abolition. The hope is to share a framework for policy objectives and oversight demands that move us toward our collaborative vision of abolition to the “Global War on Terror.” Public+Shareable+MAF+Abolitionist+V.+Reforms+Tool+-1
NAL | State of New American Representation: State Legislatures in 2022 This report continues the work first presented in the State of Representation 2020, created by New American Leaders as the first documented research examining immigrant representation in state legislatures by ethnicity, political party, and gender. Following an extensive data review and feedback from New American policy makers, this new report presents five recommendations that will not only help close the representation gap for New Americans and other underrepresented groups, but improve representation and policies for all communities. Read the press release at this link and see the report below: State-of-Representation-2022-New-American-LeadersDownload
OCA-GH & AALDEF | Amicus Brief on Texas Redistricting In 2011, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), together with pro bono counsel Kaye Scholer LLP, filed an amicus brief in Perry v. Perez on behalf of the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) Greater Houston Chapter urging the U.S. Supreme Court to affirm a Texas district court’s interim redistricting plan after the Department of Justice (DOJ) contended that the Texas state legislature’s plan diluted the voting power of Asian Americans and other people of color. AALDEF’s amicus brief in Perry v. Perez contends that the district court’s intervention was necessary because of significant evidence that the state legislature’s PlanH283 discriminates against Asian Americans, including: Vietnamese American representative Hubert Vo’s district was merged with another district represented by Scott Hochberg. The House Redistricting Committee told Hochberg it intended to give him an advantage over Vo. The Asian American, Latino, and African American bloc of voters who have elected Vo since 2004 was dispersed. PlanH283 greatly reduced the Asian American population in District 26 – where it is highest in the state – while doing nothing to offset the loss to Asian American representation. The district court noted this reconfiguration made District 26 “irregularly shaped” and “may have been an attempt by the State to intentionally dismantle an emerging minority district.” Representative Beverly Woolley, who led the redistricting process in Harris County that led to PlanH283, excluded minority representatives from the process. She told them, “You all are protected by the Voting Rights Act and we are not. We don’t want to lose these people due to population growth in the county, or we won’t have any districts left.” Following a trial in January 2012, the three-judge district court in Washington, DC denied Section 5 preclearance on August 28, 2012 in a lengthy and mostly unanimous opinion. In its ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to allow Texas to put its congressional, state senate and state house redistricting plans into effect because they have not been precleared under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. (co-counsel Kaye Scholer) Read the brief below, and see the press release at this link. Amicus_Brief_for_the_Org._of_Chinese_Americans_Houston_Chapter
AAPI Fund | Police Reform Policy Brief In this policy brief, civil rights attorney Je Yon Jung writes about the intersections of the Black-led movement against police brutality and the critical role that AAPIs must play in uniting for police reform. The piece explores the historical underpinnings of policing and the pathway to policing in the United States today. It demystifies the legal and practical basis for the enduring lack of police accountability in courtrooms and our society and why the movement to “defund the police” is not as radical as some believe. 2022-police-report
Notes from the Field: Critical Race Theory and AAPI’s “The attack on Critical Race Theory (CRT) is here to stay, at least for a while. To be honest, when Republican pols first began using the term around 2020, it felt like a trial balloon that would surely be short-lived. After all, the very few Americans who knew about CRT back then were probably professors and lawyers and what they knew about it was that CRT was an esoteric, marginalized legal theory. The stuff that law professors might get excited about, but practically no one else. Yet, as Glenn Youngkin showed in Virginia’s gubernatorial race last November, Republican candidates and strategists may just be onto something. The assault on CRT now appears to be one of the main weapons in the messaging arsenal that Republicans will deploy to woo and win voters in the 2022 midterms. This installment of Notes from the Field thus shares some background and some thoughts on CRT and how it may relate to Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) engagement in 2022. I first review how we got here – both the recent politicization of CRT as a campaign issue and the origins of CRT as a legal movement in the academy. There are two “critical race theories” in play here and at the end of the day, the role that CRT plays in 2022 will depend on how it is defined and understood. “Critical Race Theory” as Republican candidates and campaigns aim to define it is a dog-whistle and a Hermione Granger grab bag for all sorts of discontents and resentment. Critical Race Theory as a considered and coherent perspective on the role of race in American law, society, and politics, however, is something that AAPI voters should relate to and have a stake in.” Check out our latest piece on “Critical Race Theory and AAPIs” in Notes from the Field, a series of semi-regular think pieces authored by Takeu Lee, Senior Fellow at the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund. Lee is also the George Johnson Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and currently serves on the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee.