2020 Annual Report

Every generation has a moment of awakening. This year provided a few seminal moments that threatened to either rip the Nation apart or bring us together. The Asian American community became the target for those looking to blame COVID-19 on someone. Instantly, our community was dealing with the dual pandemic of the coronavirus and racism. Several politicians stoked those embers of hate with rhetoric that firmly put a bullseye on the back of every Asian American.

As we spoke out against the increasing attacks in our community, Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC sought coverage in the media and began working on solutions to deliver to the community. We partnered with Hollaback! to develop a bystander intervention training, which quickly gained traction in the community. As we continued our dual effort of raising awareness and training our community on de-escalation techniques, our world was rocked again. We watched in disbelief and horror as video showing the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Minnesota police officer was on every news outlet and occupied our conversations. In that moment, we found ourselves, now more than ever, standing in solidarity as allies in support of the Black community, while also struggling with the attacks in the Asian American community.

With the world gripped by the pandemic, we not only talked openly about racism but also the racial and economic disparities laid bare by the coronavirus. We pivoted to a virtual environment where we sought to make sure everyone in our community could be counted in the 2020 Census and continued to fight against every tactic to politicize the decennial census.

Our fight for representation was on a dual front as well. Even as we worked to get full participation in filling out the census, we turned our attention to helping our community have access to the ballot box. The record turnout of Asian Americans helped our country reject the white supremacy grip of the last four years and look toward the unity our country needs.

In our 2020 Annual Report, you will see that Advancing Justice – AAJC rose to meet every challenge encountered in 2020 from combatting misinformation and disinformation, including pushing online platforms to remove the most egregious offenders, to our continued success in supporting affirmative action as race-conscious admissions was upheld in the Harvard University case this year.

During this year, we worked in coalition to ensure that immigration did not disappear from public discourse and we garnered more than 75 co-sponsors for the Reuniting Families Act – legislation to vastly improve the family-based immigration system. Lastly, we launched The Anti-Racial Profiling Project for those impacted by the U.S. government’s increased efforts to target and profile Asian American and Asian immigrant scientists, researchers, and scholars, particularly those of Chinese descent. In a joint letter to our community this year, we wrote that we were made for this moment. And we still are. Advancing Justice | AAJC knows what it takes to create change, work in solidarity, and strive toward the equity and unity that we all deserve, that this country deserves.