Adventure Time with KC

Last week, I worked with Anj to develop and practice for an outreach training for the youth of AYA. Since the art exhibit is coming up, it's time to learn more skills and get the community involved and interested in what our exhibit has to offer. Unfortunately, police violence continues across the country and fuels the media. Names like Eric Garner and Mike Brown are our buzz words when we talk to strangers about violence against women, lgbtq folks and people of color.  I was most nervous about the role play because I wanted to model all parts of the outreach script so that the youth can understand how to approach people. One of the youth helped me practice role play and he was super helpful and enthusiastic. I practiced my clipboard flip to get people to hold the clipboard and see the flyer and stay a while for the conversation.  When the time came on Saturday, we had an extensive workshop on exploring our personal stakes in the issue of police violence, and how we can engage...

Things have been switching up a little at the internship. On Friday, the youth do not meet, but two youths came into the office to help with transcribing the interviews we got with the public about police violence and violence against women and LGBTQ communities. The pictures look great, and the quotes are awesome. I really enjoyed Friday because the rest of the staff weren't in, so it was just me doing work quietly, which I prefer, and hanging out with the two girls. They are great fun to talk to and very diligent, I had a lot of fun learning more about them, since most of the time when AYA meets it is a huge group and there's a lot going on and I'm usually busy making sure things go smoothly.  On Saturday it was a really different experience. AYA went out to the Bronx to help some groups do a mural on police reform and community safety. The mural is really elaborate and really neat, featuring a lot of symbolism and working together between communities and law enfor...

Things are coming along for the Asian Youth in Action art exhibit. It takes a long time to get everyone to give their opinions and decide on programming, scheduling, and all these logistics, but I think it's awesome that the youth get to decide what they wanna do. I wish I had a chance to do stuff like this when I was in high school. One of the groups has also been working on a paper mache caterpillar for one of their activities for the art exhibit. I was really glad to see some other youth from other groups stay after to help them out and make the caterpillar. It's not done yet but it really is beautiful to be able to chill and get your hands dirty together with some friends and get to know people. I'm really excited to see how the art exhibit turns out. One of the other youth submitted her art piece through me and I put it in a tote bag for now, and it's so cool! Depending on if you're standing to the left or right of the piece you see a different image. How f...

I was just playing around on my computer when I was hit by an idea. A week or two ago, I read an article about a Minnesota woman who video recorded her street harassers and made business cards to hand out to these harassers to explain why street harassment is not okay. Her project can be found on CardsAgainstHarassment.com . I had been thinking about what I would want to submit to the art exhibit that AYA is hosting on August 24th. The art exhibit is focused on police violence, violence against women, violence against LGBTQ communities, and the intersections of those issues. I don't feel inspired to draw/paint/write a poem, and one idea I had was to perform spoken word. But I would probably just re-perform something someone else wrote. And how long would it take for me to memorize a whole performance and perfect it? I have been reflecting on my experiences being harassed in public, and I've been meaning to think about what is something I can do about it. So I decided to ma...

As part of the art exhibit that the youth in AYA are doing this summer, we went out to the community today to ask people in New York what they thought of police violence, violence against women, and/or violence against LGBTQ members. Some of the youth spent a lot of time planning the script and the action details. We finally got our groups together and went out today to talk to people. My group went to Union Square. It was a nice sunny day after the rain in the morning. There weren't a lot of youth and youth of color during that time of the day.  We spotted a couple of people wearing a pink vest that seems to be from some sort of NGO working on girl's rights, and we thought, hey, they must have something to say about gender-based violence, right? Let's ask one of them. We approached one of the young men and it was a truly uncomfortable experience that we should've walked away from, no, I should've led them to walk away from, as soon as we realized how uncomfo...