Kandi is the executive director and a co-founder of Asian Solidarity Collective, and lives in Chula Vista. Uy is on the Freedom & Justice Committee of Asian Solidarity Collective and lives in South Park. Le is a co-founder of Asian Solidarity Collective and lives in Rolando Park.
The leaked audio recording of a conversation among three Los Angeles City Council members and a labor official exposed deeply racist ideologies and actions among political leaders entrusted to lead us. The anti-Black and anti-Indigenous rantings of Councilmembers Gil Cedillo, Kevin de León and Nury Martinez, and union leader Ron Herrera revealed their deep disdain for community organizations and their use of redistricting to protect their personal political ambitions. This crisis is a call for San Diegans to question the limits of representation and visibility, to demand more than a racial checkbox for the people we elect, and to invest in multiracial coalitions that have the power to reshape systems that do not serve the people.
Opinion
United Against Hate Week has spread to more than 200 communities, and San Diego is participating for the first time this year.
We believe the community engagement we built in San Diego serves as a model and an important counterpoint to those politics of division. Last year, we were part of a citywide coalition led by people of color to advocate for fair and just districts in San Diego. While many Asian American and Pacific Islander groups advocated for a 40 percent AAPI “Empowerment District,” we wanted to push even further for gains that served Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+ and Muslim communities. And we observed Asian American community members argue out of self-interest for their neighborhoods to be grouped with more White and affluent communities instead of more integrated neighborhoods.
To address issues like anti-Asian hate and White supremacy, we need to consider the needs of all oppressed communities — even as we advocate for our own. Through our advocacy, we push the AAPI community beyond a sense of racial hierarchy and alignment with Whiteness and wealth, and towards unity and shared interest among all communities instead. We founded Asian Solidarity Collective in 2016 to build Asian solidarity intersectionally with Black, Brown and Indigenous folks, people with disabilities, and queer and transgender people of color. The necessary work of building authentic cross-racial relationships is not easy and doesn’t happen overnight.
Our coalition pushed for a map of nine San Diego City Council districts that was carefully agreed upon by more than 40 organizations in order to create five majority-minority districts, and we refused to yield to White supremacist divide-and-conquer tactics. The city’s redistricting commission ignored 2020 census data and decided to uphold the power of two affluent coastal districts instead of putting the diverse neighborhoods of Clairemont Mesa, Linda Vista and Serra Mesa together into one district. Some commissioners accused our coalition of having a “suspicious” agenda and gave more credence to public comments from planning groups and “individual residents.” This is another example of the decades-long disenfranchisement of Black, Indigenous and people of color communities in San Diego.
However, we know that our communities are more powerful than disgraced political leaders or out-of-touch commissioners. We came together, and we turned out. Alongside the San Diego Communities Collaboration Coalition, the Unity Coalition, the San Diego Asian Pacific Islander Coalition and Neighborhood Voices, we won an AAPI “Empowerment District” in San Diego City Council District 6 with an over 40 percent AAPI population. By working together, we strengthened both Latinx representation in District 8 and Black representation in District 4 to ensure these communities’ political power is not diluted. And we worked alongside LGBTQ+ organizations and leaders in our coalition to preserve LGBTQ+ voting power in District 3.
We demand our city do more over the next decade to recruit diverse redistricting commissioners from working-class Black, Indigenous and people of color communities. San Diego-based grassroots organizations need more funding to lead and take part in coalition and commission meetings. We need to build more capacity for community engagement efforts specifically around redistricting. We need more access to demographers. All commissioners should undergo diversity, equity and inclusion training, and have a commitment to equity before making decisions about how our communities are represented. And, finally, we need independent legal consultants for communities of interest to legitimately question dubious practices in redistricting such as maps created by commissioners behind closed doors and drawing districts to retain political power.
We didn’t win all that our coalition had wanted, but we leaned on our solidarity practices within a system that continuously pits communities of color against each other. Our partners gave us grace and reminded us to be accountable to each other. We will continue to choose one another over a system that proclaims itself the only pathway. Together, we are the pathway.
Our shared work toward collective liberation is a political win in and of itself, regardless of the measures we pass or the maps we get to define. Solidarity is everything. We want to say it loud and clear for those in privileged positions of power: There is no power like that of the people organizing for each other’s liberation.
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We must engage and listen to our communities to determine how we can meet the needs of all constituents.
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In the society we want to create, there is no room for racism. There is no room for anti-Black, nor anti-Indigenous practices.
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We want to help empower Californians to step up to combat bias and discrimination.
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Incidents of hate crimes, intimidation and verbal hate can manifest into physical violence and even death.
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We must protect LGBTQ children and families — the criminalization of our community is happening now.
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Our country, our culture, our economy, our foreign affairs and our safety must serve and include everyone — but Arab Americans are often left behind.
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