2022 marked the 50th year of our civil rights advocacy. Staff, alumni, and supporters of Asian Law Caucus gathered throughout the year to celebrate five decades of of community lawyering in the fight with and for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities. Our 50th Anniversary Celebration, themed “Tomorrow’s World is Ours to Build,” took inspiration from Yuri Kochiyama’s powerful call to action to commemorate this milestone year of ALC’s history.
Founded on the heels of the Civil Rights, Third World Liberation Front, and Asian American movements, the organization first started back in 1972, when its founders took a broken, discarded door, laid it flat on some bricks and boxes, and turned it into a table for their first office in Oakland. As the first legal services and civil rights organization in the nation serving Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, ALC has played a pivotal role in key cases such as Chann v. Scott, the Coram Nobis cases, U.S. v. Wen Ho Lee, and advancing policies like SB 54, The California Values Act.
The 50th Anniversary wasn’t just a chance to reflect back on this legacy. It has also been an opportunity to renew our commitment for the next fifty. Through the past year’s gatherings, panels, celebrations, and interviews, we have collectively explored what it means to heed Kochiyama’s call to build tomorrow’s world, one where everyone – especially immigrant, refugee, and low-income members of our communities – can thrive.
We kicked the year off with our Special Reception, gathering alumni and friends to celebrate AAPI Heritage Month in May and convened affiliate partners for a panel discussion, "Power Is Ours to Build." In a powerful and inspiring conversation with ALC Executive Director Aarti Kohli and Executive Director of Advancing Justice - Chicago Grace Pai, Executive Director of Advancing Justice - Atlanta Phi Nguyen, our panel emphasized the necessity of multigenerational, multiethnic, and multiracial base building with those directly impacted by structural inequity, in order to transform institutions, systems, policies, and narratives. As Nguyen says, “By building power that way, you’re making sure the people directly impacted are driving change, and also building leaders within the community to sustain our movement and our power.”
Nguyen’s words connect back to ALC’s community lawyering model, first envisioned by the organization’s founders and then, over the course of five decades, developed into a three-pronged strategy combining community education, legal representation, and policy advocacy. During our Alumni Reunion in September, co-founders Dale Minami, Gene Lam, and Michael G.W. Lee took us back to the roots of this founding vision. As Minami said in a co-founders’ panel discussion, "The Movement is Ours to Build," which was moderated by Peggy Saika and Bill Tamayo, “It was not the old model where lawyers are the heroes in court who win something, and everyone applauds and the movie is over.”
He continued, “It was more of an ongoing struggle, and more to help this community to learn to empower itself. It means incorporating them, teaching them the limits of the criminal justice system. There are a lot of things we can do educationally, as lawyers, to demystify [the law].”
This very vision would pave the way for our advocacy work–for instance, to leverage legal strategies to strengthen the labor fights of low-income immigrant workers. We invited current Senior Counsel of Impact Litigation Winifred Kao, who leads our Workers' Rights program, to be in conversation with alumni Lora Jo Foo, Hina Shah, and Helen Chen to reflect on this ongoing work. The panel discussion, "Economic Security Is Ours to Build," covers our work with garment workers in the 1980s, AXT electronic workers in the 2000s, nail salon workers a decade later, and, most recently, rideshare drivers fighting to obtain unemployment insurance during the pandemic and to secure their rights as app-based workers. Relatedly, we have also been working with rideshare drivers to claim unemployment insurance during COVID-19, publish a job security survey, challenge unfounded deactivation decisions, and hold Uber and Lyft accountable for workplace safety violations. The throughline over the years has been clear: Community education, outreach, and empowerment have been critical to building the foundations for every legal fight and for labor organizing led by low-wage immigrant workers to achieve justice.
This lesson was evident in another panel discussion we convened, “Justice Is Ours to Build," which reflects back on our work challenging race-based surveillance and discriminatory immigration policy under the pretext of national security. In addressing lessons and challenges in building racial solidarity between AAPI and AMEMSA communities, as well as with Black communities, current Program Manager & Staff Attorney of our National Security and Civil Rights program Hammad Alam has said, “When we talk about building [solidarity], this goes beyond the courts.” Alumni Don Tamaki, Eric Yamamoto, and Shirin Sinnar joined Alam in exploring our work litigating the 1983 Coram Nobis case in seeking reparations for incarcerated Japanese Americans, and drew present-day connections to racial targeting and surveillance experienced by Black, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities post-9/11, as well as Chinese American and immigrant communities targeted by anti-Asian policies such as Trump’s China Initiative.
Over the decades, we have continued to grow our organizational strategy to prioritize and strengthen solidarity across racial and ethnic lines in the fight for justice. We have worked in coalition to end racist traffic stops; to dismantle the jail- and prison-to-ICE deportation pipeline impacting Black, refugee, and immigrant community members such as Sophea Phea and Brian Bukle; to sever collaboration between the San Francisco Police Department and the Department of Justice’s Joint Terrorism Task Force; to mobilizing with the national No Muslim Ban Ever Coalition and advocate for Black and AMEMSA community members impacted by the Muslim Bans.
We concluded our celebration series with our 50th Anniversary Gala, our first in-person and virtual hybrid event emceed by the actress Tamlyn Tomita. We honored key leaders in ALC’s early history: Dale Minami, Don Tamaki, and Peggy Saika. We also held a fireside chat between community advocate Lateefah Simon and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, who spoke about Asian American identity as a political strategy to build a radical movement for justice. As Nguyen reflected, “Becoming Asian American led me to the Third World Liberation Front, interracial alliance, anti-colonial solidarity.” These words ring true more than ever today.
ALC 50th Anniversary Gala Sponsors
Visionary - $100,000
Adobe Foundation
Latham & Watkins LLP
Champion - $50,000
Deckers
Lawrence Choy Lowe Memorial Fund
Macy's
Raymond L. Ocampo Jr.
Williams-Sonoma Foundation
Defender - $25,000
Covington & Burling LLP
Edwin Eng & Welmin Militante
Greenberg Traurig LLP
Leftwich Event Specialists
Premier - $15,000
Blue Shield of California
The California Wellness Foundation
Kazan McClain Partners' Foundation
Minami Tamaki LLP
Morrison & Foerster Foundation
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and Christopher Kao
Ropes & Gray LLP
Union Bank
Benefactor - $10,000
Google
Korshak, Kracoff, Kong & Sugano LLP
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein
Titi Liu and Eric Rosenblum
Larry and Jeanne Lowe
The Walt Disney Company
Darren and Shannon Teshima
Partner - $5,000
Arnold & Porter
AssetMark
Boxer+Gerson
Chevron
Crankstart
Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP
Edelson PC
Gilead Sciences, Inc.
Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho and Laura Ho & Christopher Herrera
Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP
Kirkland & Ellis LLP
David McClain & Merilyn Wong
McDermott Will & Emery LLP
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Nossaman LLP
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP
Sidley Austin LLP
Peggy Saika and Dr. Arthur Chen
Alan Sparer and Charlotte Fishman
Quyen Ta and Demian Pay
Trucker Huss, APC
WealthBoost Advisors
Womble Bond Dickinson