[image description] A golden yellow background with light green, grey, and pale yellow swirls coming out of a group of people in black and grey holding protest signs. Black, green, and dark grey text reads “Chinese Progressive Association presents Resistance and Resilience: Summer Dinner Series on the Current Political Moment and the Vision Forward! Tuesdays, 6/30 – 8/4 | 6:00-7:30 PM | RSVP Required”
Please join the Chinese Progressive Association for Resistance and Resilience: Summer Dinner Series on the Current Political Moment and the Vision Forward!
6 week series on Tuesdays, June 30 to August 4, 2020 from 6:00 – 7:30 PM
Bring your dinner and come together to engage in conversation with movement leaders & organizers to deepen our individual and collective analysis of the current political moment. This is a critical time for us to explore what it means to build power and organize for the future we want.
We will send you a link the day of the event.
Topic List (Speakers will be updated as confirmed)
- Tue. 6/30 – Looking at the Current Moment
- Speakers:
- Emily Ja-Ming Lee is the Director at San Francisco Rising, leading city-wide electoral campaigns with key partners. Previously, she spent 10 years doing youth organizing and ultimately serving as the Political Director at the Chinese Progressive Association, a founding member of SF Rising. In 2017, Emily helped start Bay Resistance, a powerful new regional organization leading the fight against right-wing attacks on immigrants and communities of color.
- Kevine Boggess is the Political Director at Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth in San Francisco. Before joining the Coleman staff team, Kevine worked with Black Youth Vote in Atlanta and led the Morehouse University Amnesty International chapter. While at City College of San Francisco, Kevine served as the Student Body President and Coordinator of Students Serving Students (S Cubed), a peer mentoring program at CCSF.
- Recording: https://youtu.be/7oKh848R3Ao
- Speakers:
- Tue. 7/7 – Community Safety
- Speakers:
- Joe Wilson is the Executive Director of Hospitality House in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Previously, Joe was the Assistant Organizing Director for AFSCME, the largest union in the AFL-CIO, with more than 1.6 million members. Joe has been honored multiple times by members of the California Legislature and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for his continued work on behalf of homeless people and low-income working class communities in San Francisco. Joe is also formerly homeless.
- Eddy Zheng is the President & Founder of New Breath Foundation, and works to mobilize resources to support Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) harmed by violence and the unjust immigration and criminal justice systems. Previously, he served as Co-Director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee and co-founded the first ever ethnic studies program in San Quentin State Prison – ROOTS. Eddy is the subject of the award winning documentary “Breathin’: The Eddy Zheng Story.”
- Recording: https://youtu.be/HkMgVRiKymQ
- Speakers:
- Tue. 7/14 – Economic Crisis and Disaster Capitalism
- Speakers:
- Libero Della Piana is the Senior Strategist at Alliance for a Just Society. For Thirty years, Libero has worked as a writer, editor, organizer, strategist, and educator for progressive social change and racial justice. Libero is from Salt Lake City, Utah, and lives in East Harlem, New York.
- Recording: https://youtu.be/-n0PMgtF320
- Speakers:
- Tue. 7/21 – State of Worker Organizing
- Speakers:
- June Barrett is a home care worker, organizer, and leader with the We Dream in Black program of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, as well as the Miami Workers Center. They are a queer Jamaican immigrant who has done domestic work in the United States for over 14 years. June has been a leading spokesperson in the #MeToo movement, sharing their own experiences of verbal and physical sexual assault as a home care worker. They are dedicated to reaching Black immigrant domestic workers in South Florida and an advocate for access to health care.
- Annelisa Luong is the Senior Community Organizer at Chinese Progressive Association. They were born and raised in San Francisco by their parents who are refugees of the American War in Vietnam. As an Eva Lowe Fellow in 2012, they learned about the changes we can make in our communities when workers are empowered and united. They previously worked as an organizer with AFSCME 3299. These organizing experiences affirm their belief in the resilience that exists in our community as well as their ongoing passion to uplift healing justice work, whether through coaching circles, expressive arts, or body movements as forms of resistance.
- Recording: https://youtu.be/liTvWw6p-VQ
- Speakers:
- Tue. 7/28 – Future of Education and Youth Organizing
- Speakers:
- Khalid Kishawi is a 16 year old queer Bay Area high school student and a youth activist in the Arab American community. Khalid is a youth leader with Arab Youth Organizing (AYO) as part of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) in San Francisco and works on food justice. He is also a high school journalist who has won seven awards for his work and best high school newspaper in the country.
- Emily Wong is a first-generation Chinese American with immigrant and working-class parents. Emily is an incoming second-year at UC Davis majoring in communication, and possibly also sociology. She started her political journey in social justice two years ago as a Youth MOJO member at Chinese Progressive Association. Together with MOJOers, Emily helped organize a youth-led campaign, “Our Healing in Our Hands” to win $1.25 million in mental health resources in SFUSD.
- Nevin Chin is a recent high school graduate from Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, and a youth leader with the Chinese Progressive Association. Nevin was one of the CPA youth leaders who helped organize “Our Healing in Our Hands.” Nevin has also represented CPA for 3 years as a steering committee member of Youth Organize! California, a statewide youth organizing network where they co-authored the Young People’s Agenda, a document with the goal of uniting youth organizing groups across the state around a shared political platform and liberatory vision for a world where young people rise up and thrive like wildflowers.
- Zitlalli Ordonez is a 19 year old born and raised in the Mission of San Francisco. Zitlalli is an incoming junior at San Francisco State University and majoring in Sociology and Race & Resistance Studies. Zitlalli has been part of PODER since high school through the youth organizing program, and is currently interning at Hummingbird Farm with Urban Campesinx.
- Recording: https://youtu.be/Mi9UNbA–ms
- Speakers:
- Tue. 8/4 – No Justice, No Peace: The Future We Want
- Speakers:
- Pam Tau Lee is Chinese Progressive Association’s co-founder, retired labor educator, and CPA’s Board Chair Emeritus. She was a participant at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit and contributor to the Principles of Environmental Justice, a co-founder of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and the Just Transition Alliance. She is also currently the chair of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines-US.
- Judith Le Blanc is a citizen of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma and director of the Native Organizers Alliance (NOA), a national Native training and organizing network. NOA pursues a spiritually directed organizing strategy rooted in total awareness of the environment, our ancestors, and our descendants, as guides to how we walk, organize, and live in the present. Judith has been an organizer for over 40 years, on economic and racial justice, labor, and anti-war movements. Judith is also a new grandma!
- Recording: https://youtu.be/qriZCsuuyFo
- Speakers:
If you have questions, access needs, or tech support needs, please contact Lauren Liu.