Steam swirled from stacked bamboo steamers brimming with plump har gow and sticky chicken feet. From across the circular table, I watched Assemblymember Mike Fong and Assemblymember Evan Low for a moment. They chatted closely while Fong poured tea into both of their cups and Low broke up the crisply fried chow-mein noodles, serving them both generous helpings.
Assemblymember Mike Fong had invited Low, who represents a large swath of Silicon Valley, to meet local AAPI organizers and leaders over dim sum. I sat among Nancy Yap, whom we all know and love as the Executive Director of CAUSE, as well as Connie Chung Joe, the CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ) LA, and other professionals in real estate, pharmaceuticals, and energy. As the youngest at the table by at least a decade and the most inexperienced by a long shot, I felt honored simply to be in the room.
As plates emptied and the lazy-Susan swung to a final stop, Assemblymember Low began the wider conversation: “What do you all need from us as Assemblymembers?”
The answers were multitudinous and varied, though the lack of an Asian American woman in the legislature seemed to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
“The pictures of the AAPI Legislative Caucus are embarrassing! It’s all men!” Connie Chung Joe exclaimed. “After all this time, it is heartbreaking that we are not fully represented.” This prompted a larger conversation on the utter lack of support that AAPI women face when running for an elected position. While the LatinX and Black female-identifying communities have support groups and coalitions for their sisters who run, we as AAPI women do the majority of work alone and are often unsuccessful as a result.
Another overarching issue that contributes in part to the invisibility of potential AAPI female candidates is the complete absence of any communication infrastructure between Asian American electeds and the AAPI organizations who share their same efforts. There are no standardized lines of communication for informing one another of events, potential candidates, or new issues and it severely limits our ability to mobilize in the way that other minority groups can. That immobility is another reason for the country’s conceptualization that Asian Americans are not politically involved. Everyone knows what the NAACP is and yet Asian Americans Advancing Justice is largely unknown. So, the question is not only about how we communicate amongst ourselves, but also how we communicate our political involvement to the country at large.
As the discussion ended and I began packing up chive and shrimp dumpling and beef chow fun into squeaky styrofoam boxes (a task I didn’t expect as an Assembly intern, but delight in for nostalgia purposes nonetheless), I mulled over a few of their points. Firstly, there seem to be a variety of divisions in the Asian American political world that seem to be rooted in traditional AAPI values. It is clear that older Asian men hold most of the power within our community and as a result, young AAPI individuals and women are structurally overlooked. To me, Asian American political power is the ability to keep doors open for generations to come whereas the status quo is maintaining an individualistic model where many avenues are gatekept. Since then, I’ve continued to think about how we can disseminate this notion as a majorly female-identifying coalition of young AAPI individuals.
Lastly, I was very struck by how closely the language used in the conversation mirrored the way that we, the cohort, communicate about issues we see. Terms like “intersectional” and the deep desire for intentional and thoughtful representation were expressed multiple times and it gave me solace. Our goals are intergenerational and we have the resources to combat issues—it’s just a matter of communication.