Sowing Seeds that Grow 2023 (Billy's Version)

my seeding change cohort <3

my CPA co-workers!

Hello! My name is Ziyi/Billy (he series), and I am a young Asian American from the Greater Boston area, specifically the City of Malden. Growing up, I did not have a sense of community or knew how important it was until my college days. It was not until the virtual days of the COVID-19 pandemic that I began getting involved in my local community through youth-led organizing and programming for Asian American youth. My roots are planted in Malden, where the city is majority working-class and immigrant communities of color. My high school is known to be the most diverse in the state of Massachusetts, but there are many struggles that my immigrant communities face on a daily basis. Through my lived experience in Malden/Greater Boston with issues such as language inaccessibility, eviction and housing injustices, youth violence, and underfunded public schools, my community has become my why and politicized me. My community has shaped who I am as a person, my politics, and my organizing. For the past three years, I have been working in solidarity with other leaders in my Malden community to build intergenerational political power among our immigrant communities living in our city that we call home. I have had the privilege to grow my network and organize with a variety of community-based organizations and grassroots groups that are all invested in building a better world locally in Greater Boston and centering our community’s most impacted as legitimate knowledge and experience to organize. 

This past year, I have been going back to my roots in youth organizing. I ran a weekly youth program focused on Asian American histories, community organizing, and leadership development with a focus on community wellness. This past year has taught me so much about myself, my own organizing work, and my community. I believe in the principle of leading with love and creating spaces for marginalized communities to develop their own agency and build their political power together. My youth organizing this past school year has led me to Seeding Change (https://www.seeding-change.org/fellowship-about/), an organization dedicated to training young Asian Americans across the country to advance our organizing skills and experiences in the fight for collective liberation through gender, racial, and economic justice. I felt called to Seeding Change because it was an opportunity to directly counter dominant narratives surrounding my communities and have an outlet to redefine our narratives as ones rooted in resistance, resilience, and radical joy! Growing up, I never felt proud to be Chinese American and did not understand my identity except for the racialized stereotypes that were projected on me. Seeding Change has provided me the opportunity to heal from my own childhood and has empowered me to tap into my own self-agency as a person, healer, and organizer. 

So far, this summer has been healing, restorative, and empowering. My placement at San Francisco’s Chinese Progressive Association (CPA) has expanded my organizing toolkit to new levels. I cannot wait to take home what I learned this summer and continue my movement work in the place I call home. I have been so grateful to be a part of an AMAZING cohort of other young Asian Americans invested in building up the grassroots Asian American Movement and continuing the organizing legacies of our movement elders. I’ve gotten the absolute honor to observe and participate in organizing in the Bay Area, the site of many radical histories and organizing campaigns. My cohort has allowed me to think more critically about pan-Asian solidarity, the importance of it, and how it can be achievable through our organizing.

With the rise of political consciousness surrounding Asian Americans/Asia America nationally, Seeding Change has quickly become my political home that taught me so much about coalition/solidarity-building, tending my relations with others and myself, as well as the necessity of internationalism and connecting struggles we face at home abroad to other parts of the world, particularly among the Global South.

Seeding Change has given me so much in such a short amount of time. They supported me financially and as a low-income student, that has meant the world to me. I am asking you today in donating at least $15 to help Seeding Change continue its important work! They truly invest in young Asian American leadership and your donation would mean the world to me. Your donation would continue funding the next cohort of Seeding Change fellows who are ready to commit to building a better world through grassroots change and leading with love for our communities! A better world is possible, and it is here for us to organize! Are you ready to help create that reality?

In community and solidarity,

Billy