As we headed into a second year of the pandemic, we were hopeful for a better year in 2021 with the vaccine rollout and several important ballot initiatives in the fall. Staying masked up, keeping our distance, and merging hybrid styles in our work and outreach activities kept us safe.
This past year, AAOP continued to expand our programming. We were excited to be able to launch several workshops:
- APIDA SPEAKS: Sex-Positive Education And Knowledge Sharing workshop series held virtually throughout April as a sex positive, queer inclusive, space for Asian folks to learn and talk about sex;
- We Care for Us workshop series held virtually throughout May as a space for young Asian folks to process the rise of xenophobia and hate against our Asian community, learn the history and context, and move towards action;
- Beyond Allyship workshop series held virtually throughout June for LGBTQA+ allies to move beyond allyship and into solidarity;
- Unleash Your Power & Vote workshop series held virtually July through August to learn about your voter rights, combating voter suppression, and the impact of local elections;
- What is police abolition, a listening session held by our 2021 Summer Organizing Fellows to hear from our young Asian community about their perspectives on policing in Minnesota, abolition, and an exploration on alternatives to policing;
- Youth Ethnic Studies workshop held by our 2021 Summer Youth fellows to learn about ethnic studies, its importance, and how to bring this to schools.
Workshops were important work for our youth and young people — to not only learn to design and develop a workshop that would pull out the answers from participants, but also for our participants to learn more about the subject and themselves. Still, it was important for AAOP to be part of the many campaigns during the 2021 Election Season in addition to our typical outreach, reaching out to nearly 10,000 18-35 year old Asian voters (including post election!).
We’re a proud partner organization for the Keep St. Paul Home campaign to establish a 3% rent increase cap in St. Paul and Yes4Minneapolis/#YesOn2 in Minneapolis to expand public safety. While we’re disappointed that Question 2 on the Minneapolis ballot did not pass, we’re excited to see that over 60,000 Minneapolis residents are ready to expand public safety and move beyond policing. Not only that, but we’re celebrating the win across the river in St. Paul, where the Rent Stabilization question passed with 53%.
Making sure our communities are able to stay in the communities we love and care for is just one small part of our work. Since the census wrapped up in 2020, our team at AAOP have been hard at work in collaboration with Our Maps Minnesota and partner organizations to draw up community maps and submit them to the judicial courts for approval. These community maps were drawn based on testimonies from our community – Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latine, etc – and determine how resources and funding are allocated. Partner organizations include: AAOP, African Career, Education & Resource, Inc (ACER), Anika Foundation, CAPI USA, Communities Organizing Latinx Power and Action (COPAL MN), Deaf Equity, Hispanic Advocacy and Community Empowerment through Research (HACER), Islamic Civic Society of America (ICSA), Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI), Pillsbury United Communities (PUC), The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Voices for Racial Justice (VRJ).
Throughout it all, AAOP was also part of the Youth for Ethnic Studies coalition and the Ethnic Studies Coalition working to incorporate ethnic studies as a social students standards into Minneapolis Public Schools. Since the 2020 elections, many of the opposition have been pushing an anti-Critical Race Theory framework to filter out the racist American history. Ethnic studies is an anti-racist way of learning about history and culture that focuses on the importance of diverse perspectives and the voices of indigenous peoples and people of color.
And that’s part of the reason why AAOP continues to share the important perspectives and stories of our young Asian people in Minnesota. Whether that’s through a zine, on our website, through our New Narratives podcast, or social media, these stories are important to make visible — especially when mainstream media often skips over our Asian American stories.
This work includes our:
- Sex Talk zine, a digital zine and website showcasing the perspectives and stories of our Asian American young people on sexuality, sex, and navigating the sex talk.
- New Narratives podcast, gathering the stories of Asian America from the model minority myth, anti-Blackness, to heritage languages, and more
- The spinoff, New Narratives: Justice for George Floyd where young Asian Americans scrutinize the Derek Chauvin trials, discuss abolition and YesOn2, and policing alternatives
- COVID19 Vaccination Awareness special episode on New Narratives sharing young Asian Americans’ stories in getting vaccinated and why it was so important to do so for our larger community
- Virtual Events Recap series, a quick and easy recap of virtual events you may have missed
- Eyes On series where we take a snapshot of the issues taking place globally
- A Pandemic Progress Update series where we check in with youth in schools and our friends from across the globe to see how their lives have changed since the pandemic and the vaccine rollout
- And VaccineRush, a fun play on the TikTok trend, RushTok.
And AAOP was not alone in this work. We were in collaboration with many wonderful partner organizations both in Minnesota and across the country, including Asian Minnesotan Alliance for Justice (AMAJ), a coalition of 10+ Minnesotan Asian organizations working towards a more justice, inclusive, and police-free world, and UnRestrict Minnesota, a campaign to expand abortion access.
As AAOP heads into 2022, we know that we need to continue to fight for abortion access. Our Reproductive Justice interns will continue to conduct research to learn more about Asian American perspectives and experiences around abortion and reproductive healthcare which will lay the foundation on how our Asian community will talk about and discuss abortion and support those in our lives who have received one.
Our team at AAOP worked hard in 2021 and we wanted to ensure that our team would also be able to rest. Thanks to a Women’s Foundation grant, AAOP was able to establish additional paid breaks for staff, beyond the already-established federal holidays; develop a Healing Retreat for our young Asian folks to gather in space to discuss healing for our Asian community and begin to practice it; and create a personal development budget for staff, interns, canvassers, youth, and fellows.
This personal development fund was money allocated to each person to choose to spend for their own well-being. Whether that meant finally being able to start therapy or a gym membership, or spending some money on art supplies they’ve been eyeing, or even on a spa day, this fund was so our team was able to take care of themselves. Self-care tips and healing and wellness advice often is well-meaning, but living in a capitalist world today means that many of these tips and advice can sound tone-deaf or aren’t actually plausible for everyone. This fund was meant to take our living circumstances into account and to accommodate for that.
Throughout 2021, AAOP’s leadership team include:
- FT Staff: 6
- PT Staff: 3
- Gender Justice Interns: 5
- Organizing Fellows: 6
- Communications Interns: 3
- Canvassers: 11
- Canvasser Organizers: 3
- Summer Youth: 12
- Youth Action Team: 23
- Board of Directors: 6
This past year has been full of ups and downs. A quiet start, then the quickening noticing of a rise of xenophobic attacks against our Asian community, the murders in Atlanta, the deportation of Vietnamese folks, a hope for a better public safety structure in Minneapolis and the results not turning out as hoped, the celebratory win for rent stabilization in St. Paul — and more. As we close out this year, we take a look back at our wins and losses and we’re hopeful for a better turnout in 2022. We’ll continue to build up our young people, to provide the tools and resources needed, and have conversations with our peers and beyond. The only question is, will you join us?
