Caaav: Organizing Asian Communities

Residents to Preserve Public Housing is gearing up and practicing chants for the upcoming anti-privatization in public housing rally! Will you join us on Tuesday, March 23 at 11AM outside of 90 Church Street (NYCHA Executive and Real Estate Offices) to demand #No2Blueprint and to #KeepPublicHousingPublic and #SavePublicHousing?

There are three days until the rally to #SavePublicHousing. Hear directly from Queensbridge tenants and CAAAV Asian Tenants Union's member Kalimur about what he has to say about #No2Blueprint.

We are enraged and saddened by the news of a white man opening fire and killing 8 people, including six Asian women, in Atlanta, Georgia. These acts are immeasurably violent, but we know that the rhetoric and deep histories of white supremacy, imperialism, patriarchy, and racial capitalism are the poisonous soil in which these violent ideologies and acts grow. Within our neighborhoods, working class, immigrant, women, trans/queer, and precarious workers face violence from a ...capitalist system set up to use us for profit. We must keep working in risky jobs and living in unsafe conditions despite deadly health risks during a global pandemic, a lack of language access, and even under threats of violence. Often this violence even extends into our homes with threats, precarity, or abuse from a landlord, partner, or family members. Rarely do public institutions and government care about what happens to us. They think of our well-being as an afterthought. They speak pretty words but fail to give us what we need. In many cases, these institutions contribute to our harm. We know that Asian, Black, Latinx and Indigenous communities face the same threats, and that these forces against us grow more powerful when we fight against each other. We know the murdered women will be scrutinized by those unfamiliar with their situation for their profession and judged as sex workers. Nobody should be put at risk of death - from white supremacist violence or a global pandemic - simply for surviving in racial capitalism. These conditions are why we must fight and organize for resources to make our lives safer. We respond to anti-Asian violence by organizing with our neighbors to fight for true safety for the working class every single day - safe housing, dignified work and the right to live without fear. In Solidarity, CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities

CAAAV's Asian Tenants Union leaders were outreaching and flyering in Queensbridge Houses this past week! Public housing tenants say NO to private equity and real estate developers having authority on NYCHA developments and tenants. Will you stand with us on Tuesday, March 23 at 11AM outside of 90 Church Street (NYCHA Executive and Real Estate Offices) to demand #No2Blueprint and to #KeepPublicHousingPublic?

CAAAV's Chinatown Tenants Union is strategizing on our annual Rent Guidelines Board campaign. The Rent Guidelines Board decides rent adjustments for NYC's rent-stabilized apartments. Every year, Chinatown Tenants Union's tenants testify in front of the RGB. Unfortunately, the process is exclusionary this year and a small number of tenants will be able to testify via Zoom. The board will ultimately decide whether rent will increase, freeze, or even decrease (never has happened before). We are still in the middle of a pandemic and our demand is RENT ROLLBACK!

Despite heavy rain during the weekend, our Asian Tenants Union members and tenants showed up for the ATU Fair on Sunday! Our bases shared their thoughts on the luxury developments in their neighborhoods, how the rich are getting tax breaks, and how the government is creating policies that don't benefit tenants or working-class communities.

Our Asian Tenants Union's bases have been discussing the threat of privatization in Long Island City. We held meetings with our bases this week and discussed the YourLIC Walking Tour coming up this Sunday. We see many changes in our neighborhood already and our bases recognize the impact these changes have on them. Our Bangladeshi tenants shared that the luxury developments cause a domino effect -- with the cost of living constantly increasing and changes in the overall community and culture. Luxury developments are not only a threat to public housing but a threat to housing in general. Here is a sneak peak of a tour of Arcadia LIC (a luxury development) in Bangla! This is one of the three locations our members toured. Stayed tuned to watch the full videos in Bangla, Korean, and Chinese soon!

Chinatown Tenants Union has office hours on Tuesdays and has been digitally organizing since the start of the pandemic. Our members have tried different communication apps (WhatsApp, WeChat, Zoom, and UberConference) in order to continue to organize and hold weekly Organizing Committee (OC) meetings and monthly meetings. What remains constant is base building despite having unequal access to technology. This week, our CTU's OC tenant leaders Mr. Chen, Ms. Liu, and Mr. Yeung made a photo wall to illustrate what organizing looks like to new members and to make memories with old members. During office hours, we've been seeing a lot of questions regarding lease renewals, repairs, illegal lockouts, rent overcharges, and succession rights. Lastly, we shared CAAAV's 2020 Voter Guide during office hours.

For the past few weeks, our Asian Tenants Union program has worked on creating a multilingual virtual tour of Long Island City (LIC) for the November ATU Fair. We plan to discuss the impact of luxury developers, speculation, and privatization (of land) in public housing, all of which are pertinent in our fight for housing justice.

Our Chinatown Tenants Union's Organizing Committee (OC) of tenant leaders gather for a conference call meeting every Sunday afternoon. Due to the pandemic, we shifted from having weekly OC meetings in the office to having weekly conference call meetings. This past Sunday, we began an assessment of CTU’s current campaigns, discussed the importance of sustaining tenant associations even when there isn’t an immediate issue, and discussed our goal of greater CTU member leadership in our campaigns.

We are so excited to announce our two new staff members who joined in September! We warmly welcome Farihah Akhtar as CAAAV's Intergenerational Leadership Development Coordinator and Em He as our Public Housing Chinese Tenant Organizer! Farihah shares in her own words, "Farihah joins CAAAV with six years of experience organizing and building power. She grew up in Southeast Queens and takes inspiration from the resiliency of her immigrant mother. She is a graduate of Binghamto...n University, where she studied Sociology & Political Sciencedelving deep into the impact of racial capitalism globally. She learned to organize while building two grassroots organizations in Upstate New York. Prior to joining CAAAV she was the Westchester organizer at Community Voices Heard. Farihah is dedicated to building power with working-class Black, brown, and Asian people because she believes a different world is necessary and possible." Em shares in their own words, "Em is a Cantonese/Chinese immigrant and settler who grew up on unceded Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver, Canada) and has been living on Lenape land (New York City) and volunteering with CAAAV since 2017. Em deeply believes in the power of community organizing to transform and heal our communities through relationship-building and growing strong, loving movements. Em was introduced to community organizing through intergenerational anti-gentrification efforts in Chinatowns and believes in a world where people can self-determine and stay connected to their homes. Em can usually be found being goofy, enjoying snacks, and dreaming."

CAAAV Community - Bringing this to your attention! Let's come together and support Nancy Nguyen from VietLead! Please take some time to make the calls (read below for the number and script) and have the charges dropped! Thank you!

On October 1, CAAAV's Chinatown Tenants Union joined the March Against Eviction with allies and community organizers. And 15 of our CTU members joined this march! We are in the 7th month of the pandemic and need a truly universal and long-term eviction moratorium. While Governor Cuomo claims he extended the eviction moratorium, it doesn't apply to most of our CTU members - this means eviction proceedings have started. Our CTU members are essential workers who have been contin...uously excluded from many forms of relief and support. Our member Mr. Chen shares that "If you cancel rent for all of New York state, then it helps every person. No one knows when the pandemic will end. Health and safety are more clear priorities than ever and canceling rent and housing people is a necessary way to protect everyone. What we need to do is tax New York's billionaires and house the homeless. We need to invest in housing because housing is a human right, not death trap shelters.

Last week, we had a check-in with our member leaders from the Asian Tenants Union's Bangladeshi base and discussed the upcoming walking tour in mid-October. It's so important to recognize the history of the land in Queens and what public land means for low-income communities. Our members believe that public land should always stay within the community. We also discussed ways we can protect our home from internal and external threats. For example, RAD is an internal threat and the external threats are all the developments happening around the neighborhood and the rise in speculation. Stay tuned for more on the walking tour happening mid-October!

This week, our Asian Tenants Union's Chinese members had their Organizing Committee (OC) meeting. They discussed the ongoing luxury development in Long Island City (LIC) which consists of 12,500+ new rental apartments across 41 luxury buildings that were built between 2010 and 2016, with nearly twice as many planned for the coming years. Luxury developments in a neighborhood equals to rents going up, rise of gentrification and displacement, and little to no benefits for worki...ng-class communities. Our OC members also had their initial conversations about the Public Housing Preservation Trust. "Under the plan, NYCHA would enter into a long-term ground lease with the trust. In return, the trust would have oversight on construction, infrastructure improvements and NYCHA staff who would continue to maintain and manage the properties." Read more here: https://bit.ly/33BHwwF

Our Asian Tenants Union program organizes Chinese, Korean, and Bangladeshi tenants in Queensbridge Houses. Queensbridge Houses is the largest public housing development in the country and there are different "blocks" or groups of buildings that encompass the Queensbridge development. We are having block meetings in order to maximize communications and engagement amongst tenants. This means creating smaller groups of tenants who live in each block of the Queensbridge complex t...o get to know each other. We want each group to have two member leaders who facilitate the conversations and outreach in the community to get tenants and neighbors on board with our campaigns like the Fully Fund NYCHA and Cancel Rent. Furthermore, we want these block meetings to allow folks to disseminate information with each other, such as eviction defense so everyone can organize, support, and protect each other. Ultimately, we want the block meetings to serve as a form of communication and community building. Our Bangladeshi ATU member Afia shares a few words about the block meetings: "Creating a community for us to support one another is what we need right now. There are scary times ahead of us and if we can’t unite to fight for what we need/deserve then we will never achieve our goal. Knowing my neighbors and creating a relationship is only the start to getting Fully Fund NYCHA and Cancel Rent!"

After four years of organizing at CAAAV and in Chinatown, Melanie Wang will be transitioning out of her role as the Lead Organizer for the Chinatown Tenants Union in the coming weeks. CAAAV is inviting you to join us in honoring and celebrating Melanie's brilliant and strategic organizing work! We are appreciative of her work around housing justice, particularly her commitment toward rent-stabilized housing and tenant rights! She has played an integral part in the Two Bridges Waterfront campaign and the Chinatown rezoning work. Come and share your memories with Melanie! We will miss Melanie and wish her great success. Join the virtual transition party on Wednesday, September 2 from 6-8pm. Please RSVP and we'll send you the Zoom details: https://bit.ly/32RFLuO

Check out more direct quotes by our Asian Tenants Union members from the August Fair! Members share how America's history, racism, and the defunding of public housing are all connected. And we see the effect of it as we continue to organize and fight for funding for NYCHA. #AsianTenantsUnion #PublicHousing #QueensbridgeHouses ... #QueensbridgePark See more

Our Asian Tenants Union program in Queens held their monthly program fair two weeks ago. We distributed over 1000 masks to tenants and members, shared program updates, and held space for political education around the origins of public housing and federal housing policy over the years. Our members also had an opportunity to share their thoughts on the struggles of working-class communities and what we can do in order to shape our future! #AsianTenantsUnion #PublicHousing #Que...ensbridgeHouses #QueensbridgePark #Maskdistribution See more

"New York’s imperiled renters, in the short term, have been left to rely on a series of executive orders from the governor and administrative directives reacting to those orders from the court system. It’s made for a messy progression of tenant protections, with new guidance on evictions often being released at the eleventh hour."