Freedom is a Collective Struggle
A Call to Asian American Leaders
by Jennifer Ching & Sayu Bhojwani, Executive Director and Board Chair, North Star Fund
For weeks, the media has reminded us that current campus uprisings in support of a free Palestine were at a level not seen since the Vietnam War — a time when students came together in solidarity to end the indiscriminate killing of Vietnamese people. Just like the 1960s, we are experiencing a divisive political period in the United States today. Questions of solidarity — who will stand with whom — are spoken and unspoken across our workplaces, the philanthropic sector, and in the communities we support.
As two Asian American leaders who have publicly voiced support for Palestine’s freedom from genocide and occupation — while recommitting our fervent opposition to antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Blackness — we are deeply troubled by the silence and/or complicity of Asian American leaders in this moment. We have also been in private conversations with leaders who feel they cannot, or will not, say or do anything in their public or personal lives. Some fear retaliation and backlash. Others ask, What use is another statement? Or say, This isn’t my lane; Palestine is not my issue.
Not everyone has bowed out. In early May, hundreds of Asian American leaders and luminaries convened at The Asian American Foundation’s conference, Asians4Palestine called for a boycott, citing the controversial anti-Palestinian views of board member Jonathan Greenblatt. Across the country, Asian American young people are participating in student-led protests, and Asian American faculty are providing critical support.
Asian Americans who are struggling to see how we are connected to the genocide in Palestine must remember what the great freedom fighter Angela Davis proclaims: those of us who choose justice work must recognize the importance of collective struggle. Leaders from all backgrounds must demonstrate solidarity transparently, within the organizations we lead and through our community practice.
As a starting point, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) speaking out on Palestine see that our histories are interconnected. This is more than a thread of connection; it’s a powerful intertwining rooted in white supremacy: the enslavement of Black people, erasure of Indigeneous communities through genocide, and Asian Americans’ subjugation and migration through colonialism and imperialism. Understanding these links is a core practice of AAPI political identity, the foundation on which we practice solidarity and build alignment with a Black liberation lens.
The Asian American identity, after all, was developed in tandem with and rooted from the Black power movement. Similar to today, the AAPI political identity was born on college campuses and emphasized pan-Asian solidarity across Asian subgroups as well as multiracial solidarity with Latino/as and Black and Indigenous people. We are not strangers to movement building and the assumptions about movements as inherently violent, even as they protest violence in our own country and across the world. Movements then and now are powerful journeys of self-expression and creativity, and demands for liberation and sovereignty.
A half century after Vietnam, we are still learning to center collective struggle in our solidarity practice. Solidarity is never perfect, but as Asian Americans we have an obligation to lead knowing our history, and with a clear eye for our shared futures. With that in mind, we offer three ways that Asian American leaders can practice the principle of freedom as a collective struggle.
Lead for Collective Liberation. Leading in this moment is about listening and bravely naming what is common to us all. Because of the world we live in and our conditioning, we’re all racists. We’re all antisemitic. We can learn to live and move against these -isms intentionally and explicitly. We need to identify, welcome and understand what are calls to justice rather than succumb to dismissing them based on inflammatory fear mongering.
Prioritize Need Over Affinity. Many Asian Americans are leading multiracial spaces and uniquely positioned to shape institutions, cultivate new leaders and resource organizations. The temptation to lean into affinity with “our” communities is strong; instead, AAPI leaders must prioritize addressing systemic inequities in leadership, resource mobilization and policy responses in their grantmaking, advocacy and hiring decisions.
Leverage Proximity to Power, not to advance our own agendas but to mobilize and distribute resources toward racial justice. Our power within the sector positions us well to pull puppet strings to influence funding. While funding is not a substitute for systemic change, it can move the needle in small and big ways that contribute to a more just world.
As Asian Americans, we can become lost in a conversation about race that seems to exclude our specific experiences. We can be complicit in myth-making about our model status. We can retreat from struggles that feel politically contentious to keep the peace. These are all dangerous and short-sighted places to remain stuck. Like other periods in our country’s history, this is a time for dialogue and action.
