AAOP’s Organizing Fellowship Wraps Up for the Summer
As the summer draws to a close, so does Asian American Organizing Project’s Summer Organizing Fellowship program. The Fellowship program at AAOP is a 3 month paid internship program that invites emerging Asian American leaders to learn, develop, and apply their skills in real-world situations. It integrates civic engagement, community and cultural organizing, and participatory action research.
The past three months has been an enriching and transformative journey for Johnny, who is also a Seeding Change Fellow. Johnny is a high school chemistry teacher from Los Angeles, California where he first heard of AAOP through a previous Seeding Change Fellow at the SERAC Moving Mountains conference.
Johnny initially came to Minnesota wanting to see what drives the community in the Twin Cities and found pieces of home.
On the first day in Minnesota, Johnny attended the SEAD Project Storytelling Event, a community space where intergenerational community members of the Southeast Asian diaspora were able to gather to share poems, stories, and folklore from their homeland.
It was a space for healing and despite the language barriers, there was open communication, and vulnerability.
“There’s this romanticized version of activism that is just rallies, protests, banner drops,” Johnny says. “When I got here, there was so much love leading up to the events, so much dialogue — it was breaking bread with the community.”
Denise also found a strong sense of community through this experience as well. She described her past experiences as having not felt “Hmong enough” in the past.
Through a canvassing event, a conversation with two Hmong elders stuck out to her, reminding her of a sense of belonging.
“One of them said hello to me in Hmong,” Denise says. “And I told them I didn’t know they were Hmong or not so I was surprised, but he told me, in Hmong, ‘we know our Hmong daughters.'”
This program also allowed Denise to celebrate growth in a more positive way.
“I thought I wasn’t feeling super challenged here but I realized, what I used to do was I’d struggle a lot through depressive episodes and then get to the top. With AAOP, I just celebrate growth without suffering.”
While Bunnard has never done direct grassroots organizing, he comes from a wide range of experiences, supporting nonprofits, working with a public defender in the state of New York, and reaching out to the Cambodian community in his hometown as well.
“I love that in Minnesota people are very intentional about the community aspect of community organizing; they’re making sure to build relationships with people and not just a movement towards a shared political agenda,” Bunnard says. “People really care about how their community are living.”
Much of the work Organizing Fellows do is direct conversations with community members, through canvassing, door knocking, and phone banking, but Bunnard says it’s also been exciting to build infrastructure for future Organizing Fellows to continue relational work, which has been reaffirming in his future goals.
“I feel more myself than I ever have,” Bunnard says. “This is both a product of being able to learn more about issues that affect our community but also because of the small conversations I’ve had with the other Organizing Fellows that are part of our shared culture, from talking about the common foods we eat, to joking about how to say words in our languages, to talking about the home remedies our families use.”
These conversations throughout the program has brought a deeper understanding of the complexity of marginalization to Bunnard as well.
“It’s showed me that I have a lot of entitlement and privileges that I have to unlearn, so I’m hoping to hold these stories close as I continue to be involved in those spaces,” Bunnard says. “I just have to remember I have a lot to unlearn.”
For Denise, the conversations also helped create an environment where Denise felt supported.
“I have a really great team and was really blessed with really great people, and feel very supported and loved,” Denise adds. “I’m taking care of myself and I think it’s because of the environment I’m in.”
“Community organizing has been unsustainable for a lot of people,” Johnny says. “This is one of the most refreshing and sustainable experiences in organizing I’ve had because of that centering of community. It’s not overworking people to the bone and everyone here’s like, yourself is a priority.”
“This summer was really fulfilling and reaffirming to know I like working with people and I like talking with community members. I get lots of energy just from talking to people and hearing their concerns,” Bunnard says. “This makes me feel whole in a very human way.”