By Kyle Ching, 2025 CLA Intern
When I came back to Los Angeles at the start of my internship in mid-June, I was scared and disillusioned with the government. The ICE raids had just terrorized so many families in Los Angeles, the windows of so many small businesses were boarded up, and Downtown Los Angeles felt like an empty and scary place to be.
I end my internship with CAUSE in mid-August with renewed hope in the future of this city and state, and with a fervent belief that the government can work for the people it represents.
That’s not to say that all those problems from two months ago have disappeared—in many ways, they have intensified since I began this internship with the passage of the Republican H.R.1 promising to eliminate Medicaid coverage and increase funding for ICE. I have also not suddenly gone blind to the issues that communities in California are facing—I’ve actually learned a lot more about the systemic barriers that individuals in California are facing, ranging from language access to education barriers among immigrant families.
But what gives me hope despite these realities is that I just spent the summer surrounded by people who genuinely care about making the world a better place. At the Office of Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, I was greeted everyday by people who cared about stopping ICE through legislative motions or helping small DTLA businesses with advertising or event support. These people spend hours working with Little Tokyo constituents to help them create a new Business Improvement District or put all their effort into organizing a back-to-school backpack giveaway to make kids in Boyle Heights smile. Seeing the Councilmember relax in a CD-14 park with her father one night, and then work tirelessly the next morning to push legislation through the council chamber gave me a vision of what I want my future to look like: enjoying time in a community while I work relentlessly to make that community better.
That’s what I have seen from the people at CAUSE, too. Nancy and her team work so hard to listen to what AAPI voters want and need in order to stay informed for upcoming elections, and then the CAUSE team spends just as much time taking action. The staff at CAUSE genuinely enjoys and values their friendship with the numerous AAPI advocates and elected officials in Sacramento, but they also leverage those partnerships to enact changes that will allow AAPI communities to be better heard and educated.
These people that I spent the summer with—Councilmember Jurado, Nancy Yap, and their staffs—have given me a whole host of role models whose examples I want to follow in the future. I am not naive to the massive challenges that exist ahead in the field of public service, but I believe that engaged, thoughtful, and community-driven work like that of the leaders I was surrounded by this summer can result in a better world.