Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation

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Friday, April 22, 2022 | 5:30pm to 7pm

In the struggles for prison abolition, global anti-imperialism, immigrant rights, affordable housing, environmental justice, fair labor, and more, twenty-first-century Asian American activists are speaking out and standing up to systems of oppression. Creating emancipatory futures requires collective action and reciprocal relationships that are nurtured over time and forged through cross-racial solidarity and intergenerational connections, leading to a range of on-the-ground experiences.

Bringing together grassroots organizers and scholar-activists, Contemporary Asian American Activism presents lived experiences of the fight for transformative justice and offers lessons to ensure the longevity and sustainability of organizing. In the face of imperialism, white supremacy, racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy, ableism, and more, the contributors celebrate victories and assess failures, reflect on the trials of activist life, critically examine long-term movement building, and inspire continued mobilization for coming generations.

For this book talk we will be joined by co-editors Diane C. Fujino and Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, and activists Eddy Zheng and Javaid Tariq.

Chapters To Be Discussed

  • Building an Archive of Organizing Praxis: Asian American Activism in the 21st Century • Robyn Magalit Rodriguez and Diane C. Fujino
  • Prison to Leadership Pipeline: Asian American Prisoner Activism • Eddy Zheng
  • Drivers on the Frontlines: The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Neoliberalism, and Global Pandemic — An Interview with Javaid Tariq • Diane C. Fujino
  • Be Love, Be Loved, Be Amado: Radical Love for a New Generation • Robyn Magalit Rodriguez

Purchase Book: https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295749808/contemporary-asian-american-activism/

Author Bio

Diane C. Fujino is professor of Asian American Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Her research examines Japanese and Asian American activist history within an Asian American Radical Tradition and shaped by Black Power and Third World decolonization.

Her recent publications include Nisei Radicals: The Feminist Poetics and Transformative Ministry of Mitsuye Yamada and Michael Yasutake, which works against the trope of Nisei assimilationism to reveal a legacy of Nisei radicalism. She is co-editor of a special issue of Amerasia Journal on Asian American activism studies and the recently published anthology, Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation, both with Robyn Rodriguez.

Her co-edited book, Black Power Afterlives: The Enduring Significance of the Black Panther Party, examines the continuing impact of the Black Panthers on today’s activist struggles, and includes her writings on Emory Douglas, Akinsanya Kambon, and Hank Jones and interviews with Ericka Huggins and Mary Hooks.


Robyn Magalit Rodriguez is professor and chair of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis. She is also the founding faculty director of the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies, the first of its kind in the University of California system focused on the Filipinx experience in the United States.

Dr. Rodriguez is a im/migration expert. Her writing has focused significantly on the Philippine labor diaspora but she also examines migration from a comparative perspective, particularly linking and relating the migration experiences of Asians and Latinos. Rodriguez’s first book, Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), received an honorable mention for best social science book by the Association for Asian American Studies. Additional books include a co-edited anthology (with Ulla Berg) Transnational Citizenship Across the Americas (New York: Routledge 2014), and co-authored book (with Pawan Dhingra), Asian America: Sociological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Polity, 2014), In Lady Liberty’s Shadow: Race and Immigration in New Jersey (Rutgers University Press, 2017), and Filipino American Transnational Activism (Brill Press). In Spring 2022, she published her co-edited anthology (with Diane C. Fujino), Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation (University of Washington Press).

Dr. Rodriguez is currently at work on several other book projects including (with Roy Taggueg) on the Filipino im/migrant communities in the U.S. from the 2000s to present, and an anthology on race, gender and contemporary global labor migration (co-edited with Dr. Leticia Saucedo).


Eddy Zheng is the President & Founder of New Breath Foundation, and works to mobilize resources to support Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) harmed by violence and the unjust immigration and criminal justice systems.

A 2019-21 Rosenberg Foundation Leading Edge Fellow and a 2015-17 Open Society Foundation Soros Justice Fellow, he served as Co-Director of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee and co-founded the first ever ethnic studies program in San Quentin State Prison - ROOTS.

Fluent in three languages and skilled in motivational speaking, cross-cultural healing, workshop facilitation and conflict mediation, Eddy is the co-editor of Other: An Asian and Pacific Islander Prisoners’ Anthology and serves on the board of Chinese for Affirmative Action. Eddy’s commitment to social justice has been frequently recognized, most recently with the Golden State Warriors Impact Warriors award, 2019 Frederick Douglass 200 award, 2019 Ellison S. Onizuka Memorial award from the National Education Association, and 2017 Bridging the Gap award from the University of Pennsylvania.

Eddy is the subject of the award-winning documentary “Breathin’: The Eddy Zheng Story,” a TEDx Speaker, and a contributor to the book Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation. He was featured in the December 2021 New Yorker article, "An Education While Incarcerated." With much gratitude, Eddy is eager to collaborate with new partners in empowering marginalized communities, promote cross-cultural healing and global racial solidarity through engaging in Culture, History and Identity.


Javaid Tariq is a co-founder and senior staff member of New York Taxi Workers Alliance and treasurer of the National Taxi Workers’ Alliance. 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 United States in 1990. 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 percent immigrant and primarily people of color.