LEAP.before.you.look

I can’t quite believe this is it. My last week at SAN just ended, and it feels so strange. I loved working at SAN, coming to a South Asian org every day, learning from and with the other staff members and volunteers, helping SAN meet the needs of its local community members, and watching a community based org in action. I will miss all of the folks at SAN and will definitely be back to visit! I am definitely grateful to everyone who made this experience what it was, and can’t wait to see folks again when I’m back in SoCal.

I’m keepin on keepin on this week—still plugging away at the long transcription and working on the case database.

I’m also helping with tasks here and there for SAN’s upcoming Community Hearing, highlighting the lasting impact of 9/11 10 years later in Southern California. Everything I’ve heard about this hearing sounds interesting, and I really wish I didn’t have to fly out before it actually happens!

This week at SAN flew by so quickly! I spent the weekend at a conference (for lack of a better word) called BASS-Bay Area Solidarity Summer. It was a beautiful, healing, inspirational weekend in so many ways. I was helping to organize the weekend, and got to be a part of an incredible group of fierce South Asian organizers committed to youth political education.

I presented with my now former supervisor about the workers’ rights work on Pioneer Blvd, and we asked participants to role-play multiple situations—between a worker, customer and employer; between two workers; between a worker and a community-based organization; between a community delegation and an employer. I think (I hope!) the participants enjoyed the workshop, and were able to imagine some of the barriers to organizing that workers face without assuming that they now ‘know’ what it is to be in that situation (unless, or course, they have been in that situation before). 

While my supervisor flew out afterwards, I stayed on to help organize the rest of the weekend. I learned so much from the participants, and built what I imagine will be lasting relationships with many folks in the room that weekend. We had a great bhangra dance party, late-night conversations, early morning breakfast cook-outs (thanks Ramesh!) and so much more.

One of the things that I valued most about that space, and that I also value about SAN, is a South Asian space to give and receive advice, especially from other 1.5/2nd gen folks—I felt that I had much to give and also much to learn from the lived experiences of other people in that conference space, and that their advice, while not necessarily perfect, was certainly more applicable and less judgmental than usual.

So last week, I interviewed my supervisor for 4-5 hours, hoping to document the history of the Civil Rights Unit, as she is the last official staff person of the CRU.

This week, I began the task of transcribing that whole interview. Her history of the Unit was fascinating—she explained how the hate crimes work, LGBTIQ rights work, workers’ rights work, and housing work all emerged naturally from SAN’s other interactions with the community, especially with the Health Unit. In other words, SAN didn’t choose an issue area and then begin organizing—rather, SAN responded to stories and needs expressed by community members during health service provision and then worked to meet those needs. I hadn’t realized how organic SAN’s work with the community had really been.

This was my supervisor’s last week at SAN, and I was really sad to see her go. She was an amazing person to work with and learn from. I was helping her to wrap up some loose ends at SAN, and also to input some cases that she had worked on for the past 8 1/2 years into a master database. I learned a lot about the vast array of hate incidences, worker abuses, and other violations that SAN has worked with.

I almost forgot—last week I also helped to facilitate a workshop with Summer Activist Training (SAT). That was an amazing experience, talking about workers’ rights and workers’ stories with young API activists and leaders. We had dinner with the SAT crew after, and it was great to hear some of the individual stories of both SAT participants and organizers.

This week, I attended a workshop drawing connections between DV, HIV, and Substance Abuse. While the material was clearly heavy, the workshop was interesting and well done. The presenters did a great job of contextualizing the material for a South Asian audience, addressing cultural nuances (and their roots!) and emphasizing the importance of culturally competent service provision. We also heard a story from a DV survivor and discussed some intense issues around familial/parental emotional abuse, asking ‘when does authority/discipline in the family cross the line into abuse?’ Thought provoking and intense.

from SAN’s website! a picture from the worker rights committee meeting.

The highlight of the past couple weeks for me was definitely the last meeting of the Pioneer Boulevard Workers’ Rights Committee. This meeting gave workers a chance to give feedback on some of the research that SAN was working on, and was a cool example of actual participatory research. It was also amazing to finally meet the workers that I’d heard so much about! The whole thing was inspiring, from the presentation of data, to the workers’ feedback, to the discussions. I remain so impressed by the commitment to change actually from the bottom up.

So I just finished my first full (four-day) week at the South Asian Network (SAN), the community-based organization with which I’m interning. I have already learned so much! I am working in the Civil Rights Unit, on the Pioneer Blvd. Workers’ Rights Project.

Just by being at SAN, for only five days, I am learning about the dynamics, tensions, and incredible potential behind highly critical, intentional, and intersectional South Asian organizing (ah thats a lot of big words, sorry about that!). And also seeing some of the intersections with SAN itself—an organization that has and/or continues to work with youth, domestic violence, workers’ rights, hate crimes; and addresses these multitudes of issues through organizing, direct action, policy work, and legal work—all at one org. I am so impressed by SAN’s insistence that all of these pieces are necessary, and by understanding how all of these pieces fit together.

I’ve also been so inspired by seeing the Workers’ Rights Project in action. It seems like this project is really being directed in important ways by the people most impacted—in this case, workers on Pioneer Blvd.

Overall, it’s been a pretty amazing first week. I have so. much. to learn from every single person working or interning at SAN, and I’m excited to be in an environment where I think I will be challenged and pushed to grow in so many ways.

[Also, my own disclaimer: this is my first time using tumblr, you have been warned!]