“Who else can be a champion of incarcerated immigrants besides those who have been through it?” – Chanthon Bun, 2020 Yuri Kochiyama Fellow
As we seek to diminish societal reliance on carceral systems - police, jails, prisons, ICE detention, surveillance, and supervision - we’re also pursuing solutions that honor, heal, and lift immigrant Asian American and Pacific Islander communities targeted by these systems.
Too often, the people who systemic marginalization sent down the school-to-prison-to-ICE pipeline are not driving the creation and implementation of these solutions. In fact, they were shut out of the discourse and their stories were not part of the narrative on immigration reform. Without their voices and experiences at the forefront of advocacy and organizing campaigns, policy interventions and cultural shifts can only go so far, often limited in their capacity to address root causes and bring justice to impacted families and communities.
To help address this gap of leadership, we launched the Yuri Kochiyama Fellowship, a yearlong program for formerly incarcerated Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants and refugees. Since 2016, four fellows have joined ALC through the program, and today they are leading organizations and campaigns, organizing communities to take action together, and telling stories that push people to honestly reckon with their biases and reimagine what it means to build inclusive, lasting systems of care and safety.
In 2023, we’re planning to open applications for future Yuri Kochiyama Fellows. In the meantime, we’re so proud and privileged to be in partnership with former fellows in their new jobs.
Chanthon Bun: Chanthon Bun, who goes by Bun, served as ALC’s Yuri Kochiyama Fellow in 2020 after he came home to his loved ones and community through a massive surge of legal and public advocacy. After the fellowship ended, Bun became a community advocate on ALC’s Immigrant Rights team, where he led campaigns to stop ICE transfers in California and reunite Californians across the state with their families. Since fall 2022, Bun has served as a re-entry coordinator at Asian Prisoner Support Committee, a tremendous partner and movement leader for immigrant justice. With CERI’s New Light program, he also supports community members who have been deported to Cambodia as a mental health outreach worker. Before Bun left ALC, he sat down with our executive director Aarti Kohli to talk about the Yuri Kochiyama Fellowship and his work to change narratives about immigrants and people who are incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. Read more about Bun’s leadership and how he’s inspired countless others to take action in the San Francisco Chronicle and Truthout.
Ny Nourn: Ny Nourn served as the Yuri Kochiyama Fellow in 2018, and was a Community Advocate with ALC for two years after completing the fellowship. Since 2021, she’s been co-director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee. While she was at ALC, Ny’s leadership extended well beyond our organization, including through volunteering with Survived and Punished Coalition and as a council member for the Asian Prisoner Support Committee. Ny was pardoned by Governor Newsom in June 2020, and is a force of nature in movements to build a world where every person has what they need to thrive and live safe, fulfilling, and abundant lives. As Ny has grown her leadership, more and more people are committing to joining her and ending ICE transfers and deportations. APSC co-director Nate Tan shared with Al Jazeera last year, “I have seen so many incarcerated women fight the deportation machine so fiercely, modeling after what Ny did. There’s a disproportionate amount of support for men. Women do not nearly get the same support. But Ny has really brought forward this fight for incarcerated women…She has this deep love for people who have been in situations like hers.” Read more about Ny in a profile by The Guardian.
S. Danny Thongsy: Danny Thongsy served as an ALC Yuri Kochiyama Fellow in 2017, and was granted a pardon from Governor Newsom in 2020. Danny has continued to grow his leadership across movements for immigrant justice and family reunification. After working at ALC, he served as a campaigner and coordinator at the Justice Reinvestment Coalition of Alameda County and worked on programs that invest in community instead of incarceration through the 1,400 Jobs for Freedom campaign and expand AB109 resource eligibility criteria for formerly incarcerated and justice impacted people, among other community-based initiatives. Today, while completing his degree at UC Berkeley, Danny is a faith organizer at Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, where he has helped organize campaigns to bring home beloved community members like Phoeun You and Northern California pilgrimages to help community members honor the resilience of immigrant communities, learn about ways to end immigrant detention, and heal the institutionalized other of people of color.