May Highlights - Celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Highlights from May 2019

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month: Celebrating API Resistance to Violence

Dear Friends,

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is a moment to celebrate the diverse histories, cultures, and contributions of our communities, and to reiterate that violence has no place in them. Rather, we are proud to recognize API resistance to misogyny -- from communities organizing to support survivors to women representing API voices in policy -- as among the richest aspects of our heritage. API-GBV staff give hearty and grateful shoutouts to:

Mazie Hirono, the first Asian-American woman on the Senate, for consistently making sexual violence a priority issue. In every confirmation hearing, she is unafraid to ask nominees," Have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?"

Amanda Nguyen, CEO and founder of Rise, for championing the civil rights of sexual violence survivors. Nguyen spearheaded the Sexual Assault Survivors' Bill of Rights. which includes provisions that prevent rape kits from being destroyed without survivor knowledge or consent.

Photo of Mazie Hirono/A middl-aged East Asian woman wearing a red blazer and a lei

Photo credit

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#APIFamilyViolence Twitter & Facebook Chat

Last week, we hosted a conversation about domestic violence and sexual assault in API communities in order to shift the norms that tell survivors to keep silent about abuse, and to shine the light on the community-work that's being done to break down misogyny. Thank you to everyone who helped promote the chat, participated, liked, reshared, and attended the conversation! We are grateful for your support and your dedication to this cause.

If you missed it, check out our Twitter Moment for highlights, or search Twitter and Facebook for the #APIFamilyViolence hashtag

As well as Pride month, June is Immigrant Heritage Month! Join us and the Alliance for Immigrant Survivors in celebrating immigrants & showing up for those who have experienced violence.

Go to iamanimmigrant.com for events & ways to participate

Call for abstracts!

"West meets East": Caring for Asians through Innovative, evidence-based, and community-oriented health interventions: Hosted by Asian Alliance for Health & San Francisco Asian American Research Center on Health

Abstracts due 8/19/19

Conference on 10/17/19

Get more info

News and Updates from the Field:

Feminist lawyers of South Asia rally to the aid of #MeToo survivors (The Guardian): Facing down intimidation, women all over this traditional region are speaking out about sexual harassment and violence
How One Women's Story Led to the Creation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (Time): One persistent voice expressing frustration toward the status quo can change the way history is remembered.
The Particular Cruelty of Domestic Violence (The Atlantic): America's legal system and cultural beliefs about family pressure women to stay in violent, dangerous marriages.
Reimagine Lab: Accelerating Ideas to Action to Prevent Family & Domestic Violence in California (Blue Shield of California Foundation): New approaches to prevent multi-generational cycles of family and domestic violence in California
TV's Reckoning with #MeToo (The New Yorker): How workplace harassment, once treated in TV as romance or slapstick comedy, is now being tackled in more honest, original, sometimes fumbling ways

Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence

Oakland, CA | info@api-gbv.org | api-gbv.org