Here’s a little joy for your week 🫶✨
Last month, APEN and our sister organization @apenaction held our very first joint Member Assembly in Oakland!
Over 160 people from across the state — members, staff, elders, youth, working-class Asian immigrants and refugees from Carson to Richmond — came together to share space, experiences, questions and laughter.
We are intergenerational, multilingual, and visionary. We danced, sang, and plotted new worlds — a different California, where all of us have access to affordable, healthy housing; clean air; and the resources we need to live full, dignified lives.
📸: Denny Khamphanthong
#asianamerican #asian #CommunityOrganizing #EnvironmentalJustice #immigrant refugee
This year of the Fire Horse brings a long-awaited transformation to one of America’s oldest Chinatowns.
After years of organizing, planning, and fundraising, APEN and Friends of Lincoln Square Park are finally breaking ground to renovate the Lincoln Recreation Center into a state-of-the-art Resilience Hub!
By turning a place where the Chinatown community gathers every day into a resilience hub, we shift from an individual to collective response to disaster.
We're halfway to our fundraising goal! Every dollar you donate today helps our members continue to build resilience in Chinatown and steward a place where generations can continue to live with dignity and security. Link in bio!
We're honored to be featured in a joyful, rooted, and instructive new book by @mskristinawong , Theodore Chao, Anna Michelle Wang, Jenessa Joffe, and Shehzil Malik: Auntie Kristina’s Guide to Asian American Activism.
The guide features a profile of APEN Richmond leaders Lipo and Saeng Chanthanasak alongside other Asian American movement visionaries, and is full of exercises for young people to follow along and learn about themselves and their communities.
We're also excited to be featured in Kristina's new post: Four Asian American Activists You've Been Sleeping On! #AAPIHM
Link in @mskristinawong 's bio to get yourself a copy 📚
APEN’s *new* Co-Director, Michelle Chan, kicks off our spring campaign by sharing how our Richmond work inspired her as a resident and activist.
“I spent the last 30 years working with national organizations on issues of climate justice and corporate power. Across that time, much of my own political thinking was shaped by the organizing I saw APEN leading in Richmond.”
Please help us reach our $28,000 spring fundraising goal! *We have a matching grant* which means your donation is doubled if you give today! Link in bio
April is Poetry Month. This year, as the U.S-Israel War on Iran enters a third month, we asked APEN staff to share favorite poems that help us resist war, imperialism and genocide, and to honor ancestors taken from us.
Here are a few of the submissions — including two poems by APEN youth members. #poetrymonth #freepalestine🇵🇸
For decades, corporations and billionaires have written the rules of our economy to benefit themselves, not working-class immigrant and refugee communities like ours.
This May 1, millions across the country will stand in solidarity with workers and immigrant families. Together, we’re fighting back.
Across California, we’re taking action:
❌ No Work
❌ No School
❌ No Shopping
Together, we demand an end to deportations and the militarization of our communities. We demand taxing billionaires and corporations to fund healthcare and education, not war and ICE occupation. We demand accountability, justice, dignity, and a future rooted in freedom and solidarity.
Planning on joining the action in Oakland at 3pm at Fruitvale Plaza? APEN will be mobilizing to this action – look out for the green “APEN” t-shirts.
Planning on joining the action in San Francisco at 2pm at Civic Center? Join us! Our sister organization APEN Action will be mobilizing. Look out for the blue “APEN Action” t-shirts – come say hi.
RICHMOND BEYOND CHEVRON: Reclaim our Future, Invest in our People!
This Earth Day, we want to help build the Richmond of the future: Richmond’s $550 million settlement is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in our community. By planning ahead for a transition beyond Chevron, we can build a future in which everybody has access to clean air; clean water; healthy, affordable housing; and good, union jobs.
Take action now by telling Richmond City Council: Use the $550 Settlement Fund to invest in a Richmond beyond Chevron!
Go to apen.us/RichmondBeyondChevron -OR- COMMENT “Richmond” and we will DM you the petition 🔗
One of the most telling moments at the #SB1259 committee hearing this week:
Sen. Allen (@senbenallen ) pressed the Western States Petroleum Association representative directly: "You think that these report requirements will influence someone shutting down? Just reporting on the environmental impacts of decommissioning?"
WSPA's response: "I cannot speak to that."
Big Oil spent the hearing arguing this transparency bill would harm the industry — but their own lobbyist couldn't point to a refinery that would close because of a reporting requirement.
The committee smartly saw this and voted yes to transparency, and SB 1259 moves forward. But Big Oil is spreading misinformation about our bill, and we need your support before the next committee hearing to help set the record straight.
Take action now at RefineryTransparency.org
When climate disasters strike emergency response has historically not accounted for the specific cultural and linguistic needs of communities like the Asian American immigrant and refugee communities in Oakland’s Chinatown.
This is exactly why community climate resilience hubs are so needed.
A community climate resilience hub is a place designed to address both the everyday impacts of environmental inequity and the acute moments of climate crisis — with the community’s own expertise at the center. It provides culturally rooted resources, services, and support not just in emergencies, but every single day.
That vision is exactly what @solutions.project grantee partner @apen4ej , alongside Friends of Lincoln Square Park and more than 30 partner organizations, has been fighting to build in Oakland’s Chinatown. Lincoln Center has been a beloved gathering place for generations of new immigrants, neighbors, and families, and now it’s being transformed into a Climate Resilience Hub, the first of its kind in Oakland.
This is what climate resilience looks like when frontline communities are at the center of creating the solutions where they live.
#climatejustice #climateresilience
Today, we took to the streets of Richmond to demand NO WAR IN IRAN, NO ARMS TO ISRAEL, NO ICE, and NO KINGS!
Youth leader, Olivia Jung, says, “There have been cuts to environmental protections, healthcare, and education. The US is in a war that we never even asked for. Families are living in fear of ICE… but it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s time for us to stand up, fight back, and keep organizing!”
See you at the next one 🌱
