Police, Politics

Power Of One Simple Letter -- Asian Americans Come Together To Support Black Lives Matter

A conversation with two of the organizers of Letters For Black Lives

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Jeena Cho

Jeena Cho

If you’ve been following the events from the past week — the senseless killing of black men, followed by killing of police officers, it’s easy to feel disillusioned and helpless. As I wrote about over on Forbes:

I’ve personally been struggling with a sense of hopelessness, helplessness, outrage and deep sadness. Perhaps you are as well. I find myself endlessly scrolling through my Facebook and Twitter feed, feeling ever more traumatized. Not knowing what I can do to contribute, to help.

Earlier yesterday, I came across a post in my Facebook feed, titled: Dear Mom, Dad, Uncle, Auntie: Black Lives Matter to Us, Too. The outpouring of support has been overwhelming. What started out as a letter in Google Docs by one woman as a way to start a dialogue with her elders has turned into a community movement.

I sat down with two of the organizers of Letters For Black Lives — Gary Chou (@garychou) and B Cordelia Yu (@thebestsophist)  for this Q&A.

How did the idea behind the letter come about?

Christina Xu tweeted out a few thoughts that really resonated and then included that google doc, and then a lot of friend started sharing and contributing to it.

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Who are the main organizers? Did you know each other prior to this project?

Christina Xu (@xuhulk) started it, but including the Canadian and Latinx versions, there are a little more than a dozen of us in the core team that keep in contact, but there are so many amazing volunteers that just come in and start picking up huge chunks of substantive organizing work, too. Only a few knew each other before. For the most part we’re just the folks who are setting things up and making sure everyone knows what’s going on. A huge bulk of the writing, editing, translating, and critique is all through the community.

What’s the intent of the letter?

Part of the motivation for the project in the very beginning was in the hopes of pre-emptying another pro-Liang rally in light of the (then unconfirmed, now false) news that one of the police officers in Minnesota was Asian American, but it quickly outgrew that into a more general conversation about anti-Blackness and police violence in America.

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Why crowdsource the letter? Why was this important?

Even a small dedicated group of people would not have been able to pull this off and definitely not this quickly. Everyone’s perspectives was critical for the original letter trying to distill the huge complexity of racial justice in 700 words? Ooof. Sometimes there’s a worry that when you have so many people contributing to a thing it becomes milquetoast, but all the contributors were able to whittle down to the bits that really mattered. And having all the translation teams was amazing, most of us aren’t fluent, in writing or speaking, but working together people were able to not just translate, but make sure they were striking the right tone, and change the text to better fit their communities because the Asian American experience isn’t a monolith.

How many people have participated in the letter writing?

We had 15 named contributors and an uncountable number of anonymous contributors involved in drafting the English version of the letter, I know a lot of the time it was popular enough that the document kept crashing. Once we released it for translation, many more people showed up. We did a rough count late Saturday night and it looks like about 190 people have participated in translating the letter into over 25 languages.

Were you surprised by the outpouring of support from the letter?

Chou: I think many of us can relate to the problem of: “What can I do?,” which is incredibly frustrating. I think this project gave people something they could collectively engage in. I think the outpouring of support is in many ways a gauge of the extent to which people care.

Do you have a greater vision of where this campaign is headed?

Yu: One of the things that came out really quickly in the original Google Doc was people wanted to have resources available for when family respond with strawmen arguments, and more resources for the second conversation and the third. We’re barely just starting to think about what to write for the follow up discussions but we’ve all had them in our own homes, right?

What advice do you have for other groups who wish to start a similar campaign?

Yu: Trust and empower people. This would not have worked if it was directed top-down. Take care of each other, make sure the folks you’re working with are taking breaks and eating. Make space to take your most thoughtful critics seriously.

One of my issues with a lot of traditional advocacy is there is never space to include criticism, but our work is fundamentally about creating a dialog, so have that conversation. We’ve been watching the critiques folks make on Twitter and elsewhere and that has lead to real changes that improve the letter.

There’s been some criticism that the letter is exclusive in a sense that the efforts have been by the Asian American community and that it doesn’t included voices from the black community. What do you think about this criticism?

Yu: We even have this tension within the most active contributors, and I think it is a healthy one. From discussions we’ve already been having the last few days, there’s a lot of interest in figuring out how to translate voices from Black activists and writers into our parents’ languages. But sometimes the role of an ally is to—with our own voice—educate those in our community, sometimes the job is to amplify the voice of black activists, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive. And both have to happen because my family and my community is going to listen more carefully when I’m saying something than when a Black activist is. So our job in this first letter is to open the door.

Chou: I think we could always be more inclusive. I think the more complexity you add, the more complicated it becomes to coordinate. The intent of this letter is to be a starting point, and as such it needs to be as simple as possible–in this case a 1-to-1 conversation. I hope we can help start lots of conversations that then grow into even richer dialogues. But we have to start where we are vs. where we want to be.

Read the full text of the letter here. If you’d like to get involved, learn more, or join the Slack group.

Jeena Cho is the author of The Anxious Lawyer: An 8-Week Guide to a Joyful and Satisfying Law Practice Through Mindfulness and Meditation (affiliate link). She is a contributor to Forbes and Bloomberg where she covers diversity/inclusion, resilience, work/life integration, and wellness in the workplace. She regularly speaks and offers training on women’s issues, diversity, wellness, stress management, mindfulness, and meditation. You can reach her at[email protected] or @jeena_cho on Twitter.

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