Jessica Antonio

Jessica was first elected as the National Secretary General of BAYAN USA at the 4th National Congress held in Chicago, 2012 and was elected as the Propaganda Officer 6th National Congress in 2018. She was first introduced to the National Democratic movement in Seattle, 2004 and has been part of this movement since joining the League of Filipino Students at San Francisco State University in 2007. Experiencing Philippine exposure programs in 2008, 2010 and 2017 solidified her commitment to human rights and activism on a local, national, and international level.

Angelica Cabande

Born in the Philippines and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of eight, Angelica Cabande has been an organizer for over 22 years combining art and organizing. She has supported the development of SF immigrant residents to become engaged in issues of social justice, equity, and community planning; and has educated, organized and mobilized residents in local and national issues. She started with SOMCAN in 2004 as a Community Organizer and became SOMCAN's Organizational Director in 2010.

Ga Young Chung

Ga Young Chung is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California Davis. In her research, she examines the surge of dislocation, precarity, and (im)mobility in the era of uneven globalization. Centering on political activism and resistance of undocumented migrants, she unpacks how the meaning of citizenship is dismantled, rearticulated, and reassembled in the Asia-Pacific.

May Fu

May Fu is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of San Diego. She teaches classes on the comparative histories of communities of color, social movements, Asian American grassroots organizing, and women of color feminisms. Drawing on oral histories with movement activists, her research examines the political praxis of Asian American community organizing from the 1960s to the present. She has participated in grassroots movements for educational equity, transformative justice and community accountability, affordable housing, and cross-racial solidarity.

Diane C. Fujino

Wayne Jopanda

Diane C. Fujino is professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Asian American Studies.  She specializes in the study of Asian American activism, Afro-Asian solidarities, and Black Power studies.  She is author or co-editor of two new books -- Nisei Radicals: The Feminist Poetics and Radical Ministry of Mitsuye Yamada and Michael Yasutake and Black Power Afterlives: The Enduring Significance of the Black Panther Party – and the Amerasia Journal special issue on Asian American activism studies (2019).  Her earlier writings include books on Asian American activists Yuri Kochiyama, Richard Aoki, and Fred Ho.  She is a long-time activist-organizer, including with Ethnic Studies Now! Santa Barbara and as a founding member of Cooperation Santa Barbara.

Wayne Jopanda is a doctoral student in Cultural Studies at University of California, Davis,researching Filipino student experiences with burn out, trafficked Filipino teachers, and theneoliberal University’s commodification of Filipinos as bodies of labor. Wayne also studies howcurrent Filipino students at U.S. universities respond to these histories of westernized colonialeducation in the Philippines through community building, collective activisms, and creatingspaces of belonging. Wayne is a founding member of the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies and currently serves as its Associate Director and the founding Director of the Bulosan CenterInternship Program and aims to support and uplift Critical Filipinx Studies through his community organizing and academic work at the Bulosan Center.

Soya Jung

Katherine H. Lee

Soya Jung has been active in the progressive movement since the early 1990s. She has worked in various sectors including direct service, community organizing, government, and philanthropy, addressing issues like immigration, police accountability, welfare, gender justice, and resource rights. She is co-founder and Senior Partner at ChangeLab, a grassroots think tank that uses research, convening, training, and communications to advance racial justice in an era of rising authoritarianism, with a strategic focus on Asian American racial politics.

Katherine H. Lee is a PhD candidate in education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the program coordinator of the Teaching & Learning Center at Foothill College. Her research interests include critical race theory, interdisciplinary methodologies, and the history of writing instruction in ethnic studies programs.

Pam Tau Lee

Katherine Nasol

Pam Tau Lee is an Asian radical elder whose working class and San Francisco Chinatown roots led her to a lifelong journey dedicated to Environmental Justice. She is a co-founder of the Chinese Progressive Association - SF, Bay Area Asians for Nuclear Disarmament, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Just Transition Alliance and the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines - U.S., and a contributor to the Principles of Environmental Justice. In her nearly five decades of organizing and mentorship, she strives to uplift an ideology of radical love and resistance grounded in the practice of All Power to the People, Serve the People, Internationalism and women whose presence has taught her to act with generosity and courage.

Katherine Nasol is a PhD student in the UC Davis Cultural Studies Graduate Group. She is a founding member and Policy Director of the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies, one of the first centers of its kind devoted to studying the issues of Filipinos in the diaspora.

Robyn Magalit Rodriguez

Javaid Tariq

Robyn Magalit Rodriguez has been a grassroots social justice organizer for most of her life. She's organized across sectors (from youth/students, women, immigrant workers to academics) and issue areas (Ethnic Studies in the K-12 system, immigrant rights in the United States, and human rights in the Philippines to name but a few). Rodriguez also works as a professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis and is the founding director of the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies. She is mother to two sons, Ezio and the late, Amado.

Javaid Tariq was born in Pakpattan, in Punjab, Pakistan. As a college student, he was active in the student movement against the military dictatorship. He migrated to Germany and later to the U.S. in 1990. He is a co-founder and senior staff member of NY Taxi Workers Alliance and Treasurer of the National Taxi Workers Alliance. Over the years he has organized numerous successful strikes, campaigns, and actions to promote economic and social justice for taxi drivers, a workforce that is 94% immigrant and primarily people of color.

Alex T. Tom

Karen Umemoto

Alex T. Tom is the former Executive Director of the Chinese Progressive Association in San Francisco and co-founder of Seeding Change. Currently, he is the Executive Director of the Center For Empowered Politics, a new project that trains and develops new leaders of color and grows movement building infrastructure at the intersection of racial justice, organizing and power building. In 2019, Alex received the Open Society Foundation Racial Justice Fellowship to develop a toolkit to counter the rise of the new Chinese American Right Wing in the US.

Karen Umemoto, Ph.D. is Professor of Urban Planning and Asian American Studies at UCLA. She currently serves as the Director and the Helen and Morgan Chu Chair at the Asian American Studies Center. She engaged in community-based planning and research as a Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa for 22 years.