Join us for Jenn's lecture on "Speaking Up and Speaking Out: Why the AAPI Community Must Be Politically Engaged." Jenn is a proud Asian American feminist, scientist and nerd who currently blogs at Reappropriate.co, one of the web’s oldest AAPI feminist and race activist blogs.

For more information and to RSVP, please click here: https://bit.ly/jennfang

Lecture Description:
Asian American and Pacific Islander communities are popularly typecast as apolitical and disengaged, but these stereotypes ignore over 150 years of AAPI movement history marked by intense grassroots political organizing around issues of social justice. In the face of profound, and often state-sanctioned, racial violence, AAPIs have repeatedly come together to demand justice and liberation, often in partnership with other oppressed peoples. The current political climate makes that history even more relevant as Islamophobia and the forcible detention of migrants along the US-Mexico border stir memories of Chinese Exclusion and Japanese American incarceration. In this lecture, Dr. Fang will draw from watershed moments throughout AAPI organizing history – including the landmark Justice for Vincent Chin case that took place in Detroit in the 1980’s – to contextualize contemporary racial politics, and will argue forcefully for why today’s generation of AAPIs must continue that tradition of political engagement in the ongoing fight for racial and social justice.

This event is a part of Asian/Pacific Islander American (A/PIA) Heritage Month which is celebrated mid-March to mid-April at the University of Michigan. For a full list of events, please visit MESA's website.