Mission,Constituency, Structure:
The Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) was founded in 1993. APEN works for a world where every person ? regardless of immigration status, race or class ? has the right to a clean healthy environment to live, work and play; a world where a decent quality of life is a reality and where communities have an authentic say in how their communities are developed. Our strategy is to: (1) Expand grassroots democracy by building models of direct organizing, civic engagement and leadership development in Asian immigrant and refugee communities; (2) Strengthen the progressive movement through capacity-building and technical assistance to API organizations throughout California; and (3) Forge alliances to win strategic policy victories at the local, state and national levels.
Over thirteen years, APEN has successfully built cutting-edge community organizing models in two low-income Bay Area Asian communities: the Laotian refugee community in Contra Costa County and the Chinese immigrant community in Oakland. APEN has invested its resources in developing the leadership of Asian immigrants to organize their own communities, resulting in concrete social and environmental change. Our successes include:
? Laotian Organizing Project (LOP). An intergenerational, Laotian community organizing project, LOP has won several significant environmental justice campaigns, including the nation?s first multilingual emergency warning system. A major chemical explosion at the Chevron refinery in Richmond prompted the Laotian refugee community to do something about the environmental health hazards facing community members. LOP prevailed upon Contra Costa County to approve and secure resources for a multilingual emergency phone alert system. The warning system is a national model to alert non-English speaking residents.
? Power in Asians Organizing (PAO). In just a few short years, PAO has grown to be one of the largest community-led organizations in Oakland. Some significant accomplishments include: successfully helping to pass the hotly contested Oakland tenant rights measure (Measure EE), joining efforts with other organizations across the state in defeating the Racial Privacy Initiative (Prop 54), and successfully stopping the mass eviction of low income elder tenants in the heart of Oakland?s Chinatown. Recently we won one over 465 units of affordable housing and 300 jobs for Oakland residents from one of the largest developments to hit Oakland since WWII.
? APEN has developed an electoral program that has trained more than 50 community leaders who have, in turn, educated and turned out more than two thousand votes in the Oakland Chinese immigrant community. Over the last 4 election cycles, we built a voter database of Asian voters that includes the language of each household and each voter surname translated into Chinese which allows non-English speakers to conduct voter outreach to others in their community. To our knowledge, we are the only organization with this capability.
Because our own organizing projects alone will not build the powerful movement for environmental justice, APEN has also actively worked to develop coalitions and alliances with other key sectors of the progressive community:
? LOP has worked in collaboration for more than 5 years with Richmond Vision 2000, a labor-interfaith-community alliance, including winning the region?s highest living wage ordinance in 2001. PAO is co-leading the Oak-to-9th Community Benefits Coalition, a coalition of over 16 organizations working to ensure public subsidies granted to the developer of one of Oakland?s largest housing developments since WWII results in affordable housing and jobs for Oakland residents, and the proper clean-up of the contaminated site.
? At the state level, APEN plays an active role in the California Alliance, a multiracial, multi-sector alliance of more than 16 progressive organizations. As part of the Environmental Justice Working Group of the Alliance, APEN played a key role in Cal EPA?s landmark decision to use cumulative impacts assessment and a precautionary approach to guide the state?s environmental health and justice work. APEN has also played an active role in developing the state-wide Progressive Electoral Project of the Alliance.
? Nationally, APEN served on the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council and worked with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to implement its first environmental justice funding stream.
APEN?s two organizing projects focus on the API immigrant and refugee population in two Bay Area cities. Richmond is one of the most toxic cities in the country, home to over 350 industrial facilities and approximately 10,000 Laotian residents who resettled in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Through experiences that come with refugee resettlement, poverty, and toxic exposure, the Laotian refugee community has struggled for 20 years to rebuild and grow roots. Started in 1995, the Laotian Organizing Project (LOP) and its youth component, the Asian Youth Advocates (AYA), have focused on organizing families and building on the assets of this refugee community with strong familial ties. Similarly, Oakland is home to a high concentration of low-income non-English-speaking Asian immigrants and refugees, with a 300% rise in the Asian population between 1980 and 2000, as well as a high concentration of toxic emitters and contaminated sites, poor schools and limited employment opportunities. Launched in 2002, Power in Asians Organizing (PAO) organizes the pan-Asian communities of Chinatown, Eastlake and San Antonio neighborhoods where Asians constitute 40% of the population.
Both projects empower community residents to take action to improve community conditions. Our members are seniors, mothers and fathers, factory and restaurant workers, janitors, and healthcare providers. Many are long-time residents of Richmond and Oakland but new to the process of civic participation. To date, over 300 Laotian residents are part of LOP?s membership with an active leadership body of 20. In 3 years, PAO has grown tremendously with membership at 400 and over 30 leaders.
Leadership Development and Structure
APEN is founded on the environmental justice principle that the community speaks for itself. APEN?s community members are empowered to take action to improve community conditions through involvement in community-driven organizing campaigns and leading, developing, and implementing campaign goals and strategies. Our goal is to build an organization led by and for the community and thus APEN prioritizes training and developing leadership within the community. While APEN?s grassroots members make decisions on the direction of each of its organizing projects, members do not currently sit on its board of directors. The board is grounded in the principle of the community leading the work. The board is currently researching other models and organizations with low-income membership boards and the kinds of leadership development necessary to support grassroots members on the board.
Developing leaders is at the core and heart of APEN?s mission and work. We believe that successful leadership takes into account three different areas of development: concrete skills and abilities (e.g. public speaking skills, phonebanking, and outreach skills), political consciousness (an ability to engage around critical thinking and an analysis of problem-cause-solution), and investment in the organization. There are various vehicles and bodies for participation and leadership at APEN:
? General Membership: General membership meetings happen at least once a quarter. This is where significant organizational updates and decisions are made. Some examples of decisions that are ratified at general meetings include: selection of an issue or campaign, determination of campaign goals, ratification of annual and quarter plans. General membership meetings are also vehicles for broader political education; sessions such as ?how social change happens in the U.S.?, ?the political landscape?, and ?environmental justice 101? are implemented here.
It is our goal to ensure that every person participating at the general membership level understand and support the vision, mission and goals of the organization. It is also our goal that every person participating at the general membership level participates in one of the active campaigns (e.g. mobilizing to a city council meeting, signing a postcard, recruitment phonebanking).
? General Leadership: Our leadership body meets at least once a month, oftentimes more as needed. This body is responsible for working with staff to develop recommendations for ratification at the general membership body, and for more immediate decisions that need to be made in the context of the campaign. This body also helps develop and facilitate portions of the general membership meetings.
More targeted and specific skills trainings happen here ? for example, ?how to recruit people to a house meeting?, or ?how to speak to the media?, or ?how to negotiate with a developer.? Members of our leadership body often represent the organization at external events (e.g. People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit), on negotiation teams in the campaign, and at rallies and demonstrations.
? Women?s Leadership Bodies: At APEN, we believe in a model of inclusive leadership; this means that we take affirmative action to develop leadership that reflects our community demographically. In the past several years, this has meant leadership development programs specifically tailored to the Laotian women ? both young and adult/senior ? and underrepresented ethnic minorities in the community. These specific leadership development programs function as a critical entry point into our general membership and leadership bodies.
