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AF: And then transitioning into your work within APACE, can you tell us about like the main purpose of that organization, and what led you to help form it in 1998?

AM: Okay, so in 1998, there was a citizens initiative to end affirmative action in the state of Washington. That was called Initiative 200. And so we formed APACE, it was called the Asian Pacific American Coalition for Equality at the time, that's what APACE stood for, and it was modeled on ACE, the Asian Coalition for Equality that Phil Hayasaka and that generation had established during the Asian American movement, the early part of that. So the idea was to have a pan Asian organization, instead of specific ethnic organizations. And we felt it was important to have a unified pan Asian voice to represent us as a community of many communities that we are. So we joined a big giant coalition of communities of color, women's groups, LBGTQ groups in fighting that initiative. So it was an amazing coalition. It was a difficult coalition to keep together as all political coalitions are, but it was really exciting. And JACL was an integral part of that. So the Seattle chapter donated five thousand dollars seed money, and they went to National for the national convention and then National donated another five thousand dollars for us. And then nationwide, there were a lot of initiatives. One had just passed in California and ended affirmative action. And so the Asian American groups in California were really instrumental in helping us organize and fight the initiative. We have a lot of good resources and advisors. So the idea was to work in coalition with all of the other impacted communities to preserve affirmative action. And King County, the initiative went down by 78%. However, the whole rest of the state was very conservative, and it passed and it's still in effect. And unfortunately, I thought with Black Lives Matter, it would switch. So in California, they tried to overturn the initiative and it failed, and it failed pretty miserably, this last election in November. So in Washington, we've been, we've been fighting to preserve affirmative action ever since.

So that was the second iteration of APACE, and now we have a third iteration of APACE. So what happened after Initiative 200 is the organization... a coalition is easier to keep together when you have an enemy, when you're fighting something very specific. So after the defeat was not helpful either, it sort of dissipated, took about three years for it to dissipate. But what happened was that group of people really knew each other well. And every election, we would come together, form some sort of organization, we had a lot of different names. Asian Americans for Political Action, ROAR: Raising Our Asian Representation. So every election, we would come together, and we would support some sort of either initiative or candidates or whatever. So we would gear up and then die, gear up and die, because political campaigns are really exhausting. But after doing that for how many years? Ten years, we just really felt we needed an organization that was year round, that was doing the civic engagement work, preparing for campaign work during the election season. So the new APACE, and it's called the Asian Pacific American Coalition for Civic Empowerment, so we always had to use APACE so

we had to see what fit in there. So the last iteration is for Civic Empowerment, it's Asian Pacific Islanders for Civic Engagement.

AF: Got it.

AM: So what we've been doing, we have a c3, c4, and a PAC. And we really reformed in 2005. And again, it this pan Asian organization now that is fully staffed, we have four employees. It used to be an all-volunteer organization just like JACL. So every election, we do a independent expenditure for a particular candidate, API or an API heavy legislative district. We endorse candidates, we get involved with campaigns, we raise money.

AF: Got it.

AM: So that's what we're doing.

AF: Do you see a lot of younger generations getting involved with APACE, would you say?

AM: Yes, it's mostly young people. So I'm one of the old guard. Like I just got off the board in June, so I was the last founding member standing.

AF: Wow.

AM: And I would say the typical age is probably about twenty-four now.

AF: Okay, pretty young.

AM: And it's paid work, not volunteer work.

AF: Oh okay, got it.

AM: Yeah.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2020 Seattle Chapter JACL. All Rights Reserved.