As Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month comes to a close, we are spotlighting the extraordinary community partners whose work every day promotes racial equity and social justice and nurtures the culturally rich communities that are a bedrock for so many in the AAPI diaspora and beyond.
It’s not enough to make a bold statement. We have to do the work.
As LISC continues its journey to embed a racial equity lens into our operations and programs, the work of our partners has been a steady source of inspiration and guidance. During this month of AAPI recognition, we want to acknowledge the legacy and ongoing work of our AAPI partners in and around the community development movement that are advancing racial and social justice. These organizations serve as bedrocks, and are helping to ensure that future generations have the same opportunity to be inspired and seek solace in these vibrant communities.
The recent uptick in violence against AAPI individuals in America underpins the importance of preserving the legacy of AAPI cultural districts across the country. Chinatowns and other communities with a strong sense of culture have a long history of serving as a gathering space for individuals to come together and heal in the face of grief. Through our place-based work, LISC seeks to help preserve these communities, and we partner closely with the community-based organizations, small businesses and residents with the same mission.
Recovery, Community, and Social Justice: The Southeast Asian Diaspora Project
The Southeast Asian Diaspora Project (SEAD) is a nonprofit organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota with a satellite office in Vientiane, Laos. The SEAD Project started in 2011 with the vision of a group of Southeast Asians who wanted not only to connect with their roots and heritage, but to think beyond preservation. They are striving to be an accessible creative hub that provides workshops and tools to engage and activate diaspora communities with roots in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam. By offering safe and welcoming spaces, they hope to plant the seeds of hope and possibility, locally and globally.
In addition, SEAD seeks to grow a thriving community through a focus on empowering Southeast Asian leaders, women, and young people. As cultural organizers, SEAD’s role is critical to recovery and justice work: without art and culture, it is difficult to imagine a better world and make meaning out of what we're trying to survive from this pandemic-- before, during, after.
SEAD is also committed to educating members around racism and allyship broadly. Thus, in addition to their cultural organizing, SEAD provides translated resources to combat anti-Black racism. They also work with the Twin Cities community to share communal aid and plan events for SEA solidarity with Black Lives Matter.
On Anti-Displacement and Creative Placekeeping: New York’s Chinatown and the W.O.W Project
Established in 1925, Wing on Wo & Co. is one of Chinatown’s oldest stores. When Mei Lum stepped in as a fifth-generation co-owner she quickly formalized the store as a space for community members to gather, learn and converse. Her family’s porcelain store also became the headquarters for the W.O.W Project, an organization Lum founded to offer arts and cultural programming that supports learning, healing and arts appreciation. In response to the cultural gentrification happening in New York’s Chinatown, W.O.W. seeks to preserve the historic social fabric woven by Chinatown residents by creating a space to organize and discuss a possible future for the community that will preserve the existing sense of belonging and identity it offers to its residents.
Lum is further exploring these ideas in her work as a LISC Rubinger Fellow through the Staying Put Project. She had planned to connect with other New York businesses that serve as cultural hubs in their respective neighborhoods, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lum has shifted to explore the ways in which storefronts like Wing on Wo & Co. function as backbones in their neighborhoods, and how they can be stewards of creative placekeeping efforts by strengthening bonds among community members.
The ongoing pressures of cultural and economic gentrification and displacement, along with the rise in attacks against Asian Americans, have further cemented the need for a deeper conversation about the role that businesses play both in preserving a neighborhood’s cultural legacy and as safe spaces. To respond to the recent rise in anti-Asian violence, the W.O.W Project is activating its emerging artist community to collaborate with artist Jess x Snow on a mural on a Chinatown tenant building which will include themes of AAPI healing, and imagery and symbols rooted in Chinatown’s history. The mural, In the Future Our Asian Community is Safe, will be accompanied by a website that imagines how we transcend white supremacy and anti-Asian violence and that will allow visitors from around the globe to interact with the piece. Viewers are invited to share an offering that manifests safety, mutual care, and communal protection for the future of our Asian community.
Storefronts like Wing on Wo & Co. provide a space for community members to come together to unpack their experiences relating to gentrification, discuss other challenges facing the community, and connect with others about their experience, all while strengthening members’ ties to their cultural heritage through traditional craft making. Through her work, Mei Lum wants members to learn from past generation to keep traditions alive and ensure future generations have the same strong sense of identify and cultural to lean on in challenging times.
On the Intersectionality of Cultural and Community Development: The Asian Economic Development Association
Established in 2006 by Twin Cities’ Asian small business owners, community leaders, and activists, the mission of the Asian Economic Development Association (AEDA) is to increase economic opportunities for Twin Cities Asian Americans. To achieve this mission, it works with lower-income, mainly Southeast Asian AAPI families to increase and facilitate their access to opportunities. Specifically, AEDA offers small business and micro-entrepreneurship assistance strategies, community engagement, community-driven design, physical development, arts and culture-based creative placemaking, and placekeeping efforts that support economic development and improve neighborhood livability and sustainability.
AEDA’s art-based community development initiatives engage artists and leverage art and culture to create economic development opportunities in the historically disinvested Little Mekong Asian Business and Culture District. They have provided greater access to capital for Asian small businesses, developed culturally-specific designed physical improvements, created a network of Asian American artists focused on community impact and entrepreneur opportunities, curated a space that supports economic opportunities for artists, and organized the annual Little Mekong Night Market – AEDA’s signature art and cultural event that attracts thousands each year.
“AEDA works across sectors and traditional boundaries of race and culture, and that informs the way that we approach our work. Part of that work is building bridges. Following George Floyd’s murder, this intersectional work is more important than ever. I think placemaking is multi-sector work. It can be culturally specific but it can be very inter-cultural also. It’s important to work across boundaries of traditional community development, across communities, across racial lines, for creative placemaking to be successful. Especially in neighborhoods like where we are. We can’t ignore the demographics and cultural assets of our neighborhoods. That drives a lot of our intention.”
– Va-Megn Thoj, Executive Director.
While the Little Mekong Night Market has been temporarily suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, AEDA has not shied away from their creative placemaking work. On the contrary, even despite the pandemic and the 2020 uprising in the Twin Cities following George Floyd’s murder, AEDA has played an increasingly critical role supporting artists, entrepreneurs, and community members in the Twin Cities.
What Comes Next?
The work continues.
Internally, LISC continues to support and resource our DEIJ work, promoting learning experiences and basic cultural competency for staff, managers, and leaders. LISC is creating space within to discuss nuanced and complex issues relating to culture and identify, including an affinity group exploring the AAPI experiences and roots of racial violence against the AAPI community.
Our aim is to hold ourselves accountable and to support this work in more than words, but also our actions. We continue to bolster our AAPI businesses through our programmatic work and cultural organizations through our Economic Development, Education, Housing, and Creative Placemaking Programs. We do this with direct funding as well as by opening doors and spotlighting the work of our partners so that you, too, may get to know them and the incredible work they are doing in communities.
We aim to meet this bar at LISC, and operate as full allies in the work. We share in the widespread sense of urgency: never has it been more imperative that we do everything in our power to nurture systems that promote racial equity and wellbeing for every American.