This past week, we visited the Monterey Park City Hall, where we met with a host of organizations and individuals, such as City Councilmembers, Asian Americans Advancing Justice of Southern California (AJSOCAL), AAPI Equity Alliance, and the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Los Angeles County (APABA).
I found AJSOCAL’s session on policy advocacy and implementation, led by Benjamin Tran, one of the most insightful sessions to date. AJSOCAL’s current legislative package theme is “Combatting Asian Invisibility,” which comprises several bills aimed at increasing API representation, visibility, and equity. As someone particularly interested in language access and translation services, I found the proposed bill AB1084: Bilingual-Oriented Social Equity Services Grant Program most interesting. The bill advocates for state funding for bilingual pay, particularly for non-profit organizations serving diverse communities. It was introduced by Assemblymember Stephanie Nguyen but was unfortunately stalled in Appropriations. I am excited—and nervous—to see where the bill will end up once it is reintroduced, and I hope that this is one of the many first steps to increase language accessibility for the API community.
During this session, I also learned exactly how community-based organizations such as AJSOCAL set their priorities. Tran explained how AJSOCAL organized multiple community listening sessions throughout the year to get feedback from the community on pertinent issues and potential solutions. From these listening sessions, they found that the most important issues at the moment centered around funding, language access, mental health, education, data disaggregation, and anti-Asian discrimination. The policy and legislative team then takes this feedback and incorporates it into their policy proposals, which they then take to Sacramento to lobby for.
This was also one of the first times I learned about the potential uses of lobbying beyond large corporations. I didn’t really know that lobbying is also used by non-profit organizations to push for positive social change, and learning about how AJSOCAL gets its bills to the Capitol through lobbying opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities. This was a good reminder that policy-making happens outside of government as well, and even if you aren’t directly creating legislation in government, you can still have meaningful impacts through other means.
CLA Intern Angel Yuan participates in a discussion during AJSOCAL's bystander training.
I also appreciated Jason Liang’s presentation where he detailed his efforts to advocate for the API community through litigation. Specifically, he has taken an interest in fighting against US efforts to villainize Chinese professors and technical experts as spies. I’d heard about these types of cases before, but it wasn’t until Liang’s presentation that I saw how prevalent these cases are and how unbelievable some of the prosecution’s claims were. It was especially bittersweet hearing about Dongfan Greg Chung’s case, which ended with Greg dying in prison from Covid-19. Seeing the impact of the case and Greg’s death on Liang was both touching and painful, and it reminded me that if I decide to pursue a legal career, these are the realities that I will be faced with. Having interned at the Alliance for Children’s Rights, I saw and experienced firsthand the emotional toll that public interest law can have on its staff, but I also saw the good that public interest law brings. I used to think that in the legal field, I could only bring about positive social change through public interest law, but seeing Liang advocate for the API community even while working as a corporate lawyer showed me that these values are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Jason Liang presents on advocacy for the API community through litigation.
While I would still like to eventually pursue public interest law and work for organizations like AJSOCAL, the sessions at Monterey Park were insightful and opened my eyes to different possibilities. As I continue my internship with CLA, I find myself discovering more paths that I can pursue, and I am excited to continue delving into new interests and possibilities.
The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of CAUSE or the CAUSE network.
Written by Angel Yuan, Leadership Academy 2023 Intern.
The CAUSE Leadership Academy (CLA) for students is a nine-week, paid, internship program that prepares college undergraduates to lead and advocate for the Asian Pacific Islander community on their campuses and beyond.