Counter the Myth: AAPIs Confronting Anti-Blackness for Solidarity

‍Roksana Mun is the National Co-Director of Grassroots Asians Rising (GAR), a national alliance dedicated to growing the grassroots organizing ecosystem to build power in working-class Asian communities. Prior to joining GAR she was the Director of Strategy and Training at Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) and led their racial, immigrant, and education justice campaigns, advanced the political education and organizing training of organizers, leaders and members. She firmly believes it is the responsibility of our movements to center the leadership of impacted, frontline communities to direct and lead change. Roksana is a Bangladeshi-born immigrant raised in NYC. She is the proud daughter of a domestic worker and a taxi driver.

Nadiah Alyafai is a youth organizer at the Arab American Action Network. She is a leader in the organization’s youth-led campaign working to end racial profiling and to dismantle systems of law enforcement repression, harassment, and surveillance targeting Arab and Muslim communities across the Chicagoland area.

Tai Little (She/They) is the Movement Building Organizer with SEAC Village after being a villager and volunteer for years. Tai studied historical resistances and rebellions and the dynamics of power through the lenses of political science and applied anthropology. She proudly represents the South and its needs in the movement by fighting alongside ALL marginalized and oppressed people with a praxis of abolition by way of community care, mutual aid, direct action, and joy in every movement space.

Vivian Chang is the Executive Director of Asian Americans United, a grassroots organization focused on youth leadership development, cultural preservation, and community organizing, including the recent successful "No Arena in the Heart of Our City" campaign in Philadelphia. She has led AAPI voter outreach campaigns in multiple states, worked at the intersection of racial justice and labor unions, and served as an AmeriCorps VISTA. She is dedicated to advancing social and economic justice informed by the collective power of communities. Vivian holds degrees from Princeton University and Carnegie Mellon University. She lives in Chinatown North with her partner, and is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants with Midwestern roots.

Mitchell Yangson is the current Director of the Asian American Pacific Islander Civic Engagement Collaborative (ACE), which is a division of New Virginia Majority. He has two decades of experience working with the Asian American community through voter mobilization, electoral campaigns, and community organizing. Mitchell lives in Virginia where he leads a campaign to achieve economic justice for Uber and Lyft drivers who are from AAPI and AMEMSA communities in Virginia, Maryland, and DC. The ACE Collaborative is a proud member of Grassroots Asians Rising (GAR).