Adventure Time with KC

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...

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...

I was supposed to go work in the office for my internship on Sunday and Monday to make up for the days I missed last week on vacation, but I was lazy and went in for part of Monday instead. I did some errands in the meanwhile so it's good to get some stuff done. On Tuesday, we had some unexpected last minute emergencies come up and had to deal with it with the rest of the office. I didn't do a lot but everyone did such a great job supporting each other and troubleshooting. Ruben could not come to the office on Tuesday, so Vivian helped me take care of AYA's session on Tuesday. Thankfully, RAISE (Revolutionizing Asian American Immigrant Stories on the East Coast) came in and did a workshop, which was awesome, and that took up a good chunk of time. RAISE works with undocumented youth to create safe spaces, share the experiences of undocumented Asian immigrants, and organize the youth to advocate for humane immigration policies. They do courageous and important work and it...

I was away from my internship for a few days to visit my godfamily in Virginia Beach. I call them my godfamily because that is one conventional way to explain our relationships. I actually know them through the Fresh Air Fund, which I wrote about in my college essay. Anyway, one of my "god"sisters and her family live in Virginia Beach. I took a few days to hang out with them and my godmom. The two young boys are fun to hang out with, they have such interesting personalities, and they loved the beach! They showed me all their favorite shows and favorite restaurants and hung out with me in the water! I learned a lot and processed a lot of things I've been thinking about the past few weeks and months. It was a great few days to recharge and spend time with loved ones. After a long and uncomfortable bus ride back to NYC, I went back to work the next day. Someone from the Red Umbrella Project came in and talked about the U.S.'s history of oppressing Asians and Asian...

Due to some scheduling changes, the AYA session tomorrow needs a workshop, so I'm working on the previously postponed Patriarchy workshop. Except this time we are focusing in on street harassment as a way to talk about patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia. So I'm looking up videos made by women that talk about street harassment, and a lot of videos have been made on this issue by white women. Which is awesome, but since we are trying to fight for racial social economic and gender justice, and the youth relate better to their own identities, I decided to look for Asian women speaking out against street harassment. During the retreat, we did an activity called Life Maps, where we have to illustrate our life journey and pin point moments that inspired us to fight for justice and join CAAAV or AYA. I focused in on my experiences with street harassment growing up, and how sometimes the harassment would be mixed in with other elements of oppressing, including my race and ethni...

Today's my first day back at the internship since our retreat this past weekend. Yesterday kind of flew by, since I just napped all day and watched cartoons and helped my mom make lunch for me to bring to the office for the week. I almost forgot until this morning that the youth are coming in today, because our regular summer programming starts! So we meet with them every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The retreat was long and tiring but really great. We were slightly delayed on Friday because the van reservations were messed up. But we moved along anyway and got things started. Everyone was a little tired but in good spirits. We got started on checking in, agendas, and logistics. Then we started on workshops on systems of oppression and white supremacy, which is pretty heavy stuff. Over the course of the weekend, we learned a lot about the history of CAAAV, the history of Asian Americans in the U.S., how and why youth should organize, and the gender and sexuality workshop I ...

Tomorrow is the retreat!!! Ruben and I have been working on the retreat details for this weekend. I stayed late today to help out. Even though there's a lot to be done, it seems like a lot has been prepared, so things should run smoothly tomorrow. We have about 6 workshops slated for the weekend, along with teambuilding and fun activities planned. I finished planning for the obstacle course and scavenger hunt, thanks to Ruben and Umma, one of the youth, who helped me look for things in the office that we can bring to the retreat and hide in the great nature. Ruben and I also worked with Anj on the gender and sexuality workshop. We were going to do a patriarchy workshop but it is quite early on in the summer program and the youth probably would do better with some more foundational stuff on gender and sexuality, so we started a new workshop from scratch. It was kinda hard trying to find engaging ways to teach definitions about many umbrella terms, but I think we have some good i...

On Saturday, the day after July 4, was the AYA Orientation! The youth facilitators worked really hard to prep for all the workshops they were leading, and Ruben, Vivian, and I helped out to make a lot of logistics happen, and a lot of prep work involved writing up chart papers, whether it is the agenda, the different goals, group agreements, etc. Saturday was super hectic! Not only did the new youth come, but a few of the current youth showed up as well, and it was a little unexpected but it was a merry crowd enjoying lunch and mingling together. I had never seen this many youth in our office space before, so it was a little overwhelming, but very exciting nonetheless. We started out with going over the agenda and overall orientation goals, then we dove right in with some checking in and introductions. The bulk of the conversation during orientation was focused on the policing conversation. Since policing work is one focus of AYA and CAAAV, we began to talk about what Stop & Fr...

Through CAAAV, I found out about an opportunity to attend an organizing symposium held by another grassroots nonprofit in NYC - Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio (Movement for Justice in El Barrio). The first day of the symposium was Wednesday, and it was pretty interesting. There were about 20 or so of us, mostly interns and organizers from different non profits all over the city, including the Education from the Inside Out Coalition, Citadel Global (Spelling?), Damayan, Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance, and Children and Youth First, represented by my dear friend, Amanda Brown! We went over some basics of organizing and got on the same page as everyone else since we all come from different backgrounds and organizations. We went over things like the role of organizers, the role of facilitators, and the role of members. We learned about the politics of listening and how important it is to listen when we are doing grassroots work with local communities. The Zapatistas in Mexic...

On Friday, a couple of people from CAAAV and I volunteered as security marshals for the Trans Day of Action. I had never done security stuff before, especially not for a big rally that deals with actual police. I was pretty nervous to do the security training before heading out to the action. The training helped give me an idea of what it will be like, but the rest is still rather unclear. It sounded like it won't cause too much trouble though, so I remained optimistic and headed out to the event. It was a great sunny Friday and people were gathering on the pier for the rally, to volunteer, or just tanning on the lawn in general. As security marshal, I got a free t-shirt to wear. I was so excited to DIY design my free tshirt with the scissors they provided. I missed getting free t-shirts at Rice all the time and being able to let my creative juices flow! People complimented my t-shirt afterwards, and it made me feel great. We had further security training, after which we bega...

After interviews are over, the AYA team is in full gear to develop workshops and flesh out the summer program's schedule. We've had more meetings since then to make sure we are on track and to plan out what the summer looks like. We had to really think to fit different workshops and skills trainings in as well as the extra activities we want to do. It's going to be a packed summer! It's not finalized yet since the youth leaders will get to look at it and give feedback as well. Watch out summer, we are doing a lot every time we meet! I'm responsible for developing four workshops, and I'm pretty excited about them. One is on ableism and the other is on environmental justice. These two are issues that I do not know a lot about but I'm interested in and I think they're issues that deserve to be on the table. Researching for curriculum development materials has definitely taught me a lot about these topics, though. My favorite workshop and biggest priorit...

Things are moving along! We are getting closer one step at a time to the beginning of AYA's summer program. On Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday, I helped with the interviews to find a great bunch of youth for the summer. There was a learning curve and we improved along the way. Interviews are always so exciting. I'm irrationally excited about group interviews because it feels great to hold so much power in my hands and to make people do whatever you want. I am really proud of the three interviewers who are current youths in AYA. They are confident, helpful, team players through and through and very thoughtful about what they value. They are fair in their judgments and opinions after every round of interview, and they are delightful to work with. We basically spent all of Saturday and Sunday doing interviews. The interviewees are very unique and had great things to share. Their personalities are probably somewhat less apparent due to the time constraints and the nerve-wrecking ...

It’s been a week since I first started at CAAAV! I feel like I’m slowing getting the hang of things as days go by. On Friday I went to Vladeck public housing nearby Chinatown to gauge the amount of Asian American tenants there and John and I sure learned a lot. Social conditions there go beyond just housing, but also how the Asian tenants are organized. Apparently there are social workers that work with Asian tenants there, and they can be a great influence or a nuisance. For the most part, I have been working on AYA (Asian Youth in Action) stuff, including helping with planning the summer schedule, developing curriculum for the various political education workshops, and more pressingly, working with youth leaders on the group interview structure for this summer’s AYA youth. The interviews are tomorrow and Sunday, and I am super excited. I enjoyed working with the three girls who came in for long hours to work out how they want the group interview to go. I think it is incredible that...

Today was my first day at CAAAV! I arrived on time at 10:30am for the intern orientation, despite the fact that it was raining pretty hard this morning. Vivian, the project manager, and Anj, the lead organizer, led the orientation for me and John, and the other intern, Jeff, sat in since he started at CAAAV a few months ago already. The work environment is very casual and caring. I really like that when we introduce ourselves, we have to say not only our name but also our preferred gender pronouns. A lot of groups fight for social justice but neglect justice and sensitivity for those who do not fit in conventional gender identities. So it made me feel comfortable knowing that I am interning at an organization that truly seeks to make space for everyone regardless of race, class, gender, or sexuality. Besides introductions to all the staff and learning about the office space and logistics, we also had to talk about what we want out of this internship, what we bring to it, and what...