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
🚨 ALERT: NEW DEADLINES FOR MAILING BALLOTS BACK 🚨
For the June 6 primary this year, if you turn in your ballot through the postal service (USPS), you must turn it in my Thursday, May 28!
For APEN Action's endorsements for the June 6 primary, visit apenaction.org/endorsements
📆 Mark your calendars for June 2, 2026! We hope you join our members on voting YES on Measures A, C, & E for the Oakland primaries.
NOTE: If you turn in your ballot through the postal service (USPS), turn it in by Thursday May 28, 2026. Due to a shift in USPS’s policies about when your ballot is postmarked, you need to turn it in early.
We're all feeling the tightness in our wallets, and for many of us, housing takes up the majority of our income. Along with costs, where we live impacts the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the access to nature we have. Thank you @apenaction for connecting the dots between housing affordability and climate resilience, and for sharing how community organizing turns into climate action. Thank you @trellisworkspace for hosting us!
climate action club, sf, community, events
In the LA area next week? Come join APEN Action for our Lunar New Year boba social! Whether you’re an old member, new member, or just someone looking to hang out with us, all are welcome :) (and we may be giving out lai see, stay tuned). Please RSVP at /events/apen-action-socal-lunar-new-year-boba-social !
See you tmr at our upcoming Climate Talk with @apenaction : Climate Justice is SO Much Bigger Than the Environment
What does climate resilience actually look like in our day-to-day lives beyond tech solutions and corporate buzzwords? How are issues like housing, land use, and local decision-making central to building a livable future?
📅Tues, February 24th 6-8PM
📍@trellisworkspace , SoMa SF
Sign up via link in bio.
climate action club, community, sf events
Hold on, public safety is more than just crime? It’s about the air we breathe too!? 🤯
If safety includes our well being and protection, then pollution needs to be on the table for discussion. Did you know polluted air can increase crime, such as assaults? 😵💫
We need to keep our communities safe, and that means more community input on policy, updating our infrastructure for climate resilience and safety, and ensuring policy decisions don’t further create systemic racial discrimination 🗣️
Want to hear more? Listen to October’s episode of Town Politics, with Alvina from @apenaction laying down the facts of community safety. Let us know what you think! Link in bio 💘
APEN Action endorses @fatimaiqbalzubair for California Assembly District 65.
With a track record of fighting against Big Oil, Fatima will champion environmental justice, invest in a healthy future for the residents of the Harbor Gateway region.
We hope you will join our members in supporting Fatima in the June 2026 primary!
Elected champions need more than votes, they need organizers at their side, pushing, strategizing, and holding them accountable. That’s how you turn campaign promises into policy.
In new article, Amaya Lin shares some key co-governing lessons from the past six years:
✅ Lesson 1: Govern to Change the System and Stretch Institutional Boundaries
✅ Lesson 2: Structure the Governing Partnership for Strong Communication, Mutual Accountability, and Aligning Inside and Outside Strategies
✅ Lesson 3: Invest in Member, Staff, and Coalition Capacity to Govern
🔗 Read the full article at: bit.ly/cogov4community
Amaya Jennifer Lin (she/her) has been building coalitions and running campaigns in worker, climate, and student movements for almost 25 years. She is currently a campaign development and governing strategies consultant. Amaya was the Senior Policy Advisor to Oakland City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas from 2023-2025. Previously, she led a wage justice collaborative for the National Employment Law Project, and built campaigns for worker justice at the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy.
🚨 Elected champions don’t change systems alone, they need organizers at their side, pushing, strategizing, and holding them accountable. 🚨
This is what “co-governance” looks like: ✅ Trusted relationships with APEN Action, Oakland Rising, EBASE ✅ Groundbreaking wins: eviction moratoriums, community safety redesigns, fair workplace enforcement ✅ Stretching institutions to serve working-class communities of color, not just the status quo
🔗 Read the full article at: bit.ly/cogov4community
Photo credit: Alonso Hernandez
What is real public safety—and who gets left out of the conversation? 🤔
In Episode 3 of Town Politics, hosts Pecolia Manigo and Chaney Turner of Oakland Rising Action dive headfirst into one of the most charged and misunderstood topics shaping our communities today: public safety. This episode challenges everything we think we know. ✍️
Joining them is longtime East Oakland resident Alvina Wong 黃曉茵, the Base Building Director at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN). With over a decade of on the ground organizing experience, Alvina brings clarity, honesty, and vision to a conversation often clouded by fear and misinformation.
Together, they pull back the curtain on the narratives we’re sold—and the truths we rarely hear.
Safety for whom? Implemented by whom? Defined by whom?
Come ready to question. Come ready to imagine. Come ready to expand your definition of what safety could be, and what it should be.
#Oakland #PublicSafety #TownPolitics #APEN #Abolition #EnvironmentalJustice
