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Radical Resistance in Conservative Times: New Asian American Organizations in the 1990s
By Diane C. Fujino and Kye Leung
Part 13 of 16
Along with its collective structure, ACTION and ASIAN!, in particular, are designed to build the organizational and leadership skills of young people. ACTION, working in conjunction with a progressive community organization People's Core, implements a curriculum to teach its members community organizing skills. ASIAN! makes leadership training part of its formal structure. Members are encouraged to take on leadership, and because most are new to activism, this requires pairing a more experienced member with a less experienced one. In reality, a more experienced person may be someone who has organized an event only once or twice before. In addition, ASIAN! also established positions for members to train others on how to facilitate a meeting or public forum, to access funds from the university, or to access the media. In the other groups, leadership training also occurs, but through more informal mechanisms.
The size of API FORCE--about 60 members, including some 20 among the active core-precludes a collective model of organizing. Instead, API FORCE has, by far, the most delineated organizational structure. Overseeing the entire organization is the Leadership Council, comprised of the three divisional leaders and two at-large members. Its Politics Division organizes activities through its committees on economic justice, anti-Asian violence, Korean and international solidarity, and the women's collective. It also has two other divisions: Resource Management and Communications. The committees function with a fair degree of independence and any two members can form a committee. While many members join API FORCE through one of the committees, anyone who agrees with the Mission Statement can be a member regardless of their degrees of involvement. The Leadership Council meets once a month and the committees meet as needed.
As the only national formation, the ALF has a different organizational structure than the localized groups. Each ALF local chapters--Los Angeles, Bay Area, New York--operate with a high degree of regional autonomy. The minimum requirement is that ALF activities abide by the Principles of Unity. The locals meet irregularly, though they tend to meet once every month or so. In addition, the National Planning Committee--comprised of two representatives from each local, at least one of whom must be a woman--was established to develop national meetings. Today, three women and two men (New York has only one representative), all in their twenties, form the National Planning Committee.
An Upsurge in the Movement?: What Is To Be Done
In the 1990s, radical, grassroots Asian American organizations are working to counter oppressive systems and transform social institutions in an effort to build a more egalitarian society. They differ from social service agencies, non-profit organizations, liberal electoral groups, and other formations that are closely tied to the establishment. At the same time, today's formations differ from the revolutionary groupings that existed in the 1960s and 70s and even into the late 1980s. The new organizations are not as revolutionary in their ideology or actions and, as non-cadre formations, demand less discipline from their members. Yet what is remarkable is that there is a core of very committed activists--mostly in their twenties and often women--who are developing their organizing skills, strategies, and theoretical frameworks in a relative vacuum of revolutionary leadership.