Marlon Meyer
Northwest Asia Weekly
At a time when the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community and other populations have reached new heights of distrust of the democratic process, two organizations within the community have taken somewhat different approaches to voter education and registration.
The need for such widely divergent approaches and philosophies shows how diverse the communities within the wider AAPI Group are, and how different their needs are, especially at this moment.
A Tale of Two Communities
The Chinese Information and Service Center (CISC) is dedicated to helping customers who need services in languages other than English make informed decisions. As a result, CISC integrates voter education into other services, hosts special events, and is often called upon to serve as a mediator for governments and other agencies to help the populations they serve.
“The most important aspect is the trusting relationship between the provider and the communities it serves,” said CISC Executive Director Michael Itti. “When clients come to seek services, we provide information about civic affairs, the importance of engagement, And make sure their voices are heard.”
Washington’s Filipino American Political Action Group (FAPAGOW) also conducts voter registration through special events, but is focused on developing strategies to shape its message to reach a broad range of views and generations in its community, the largest Asian American group in the state one.
Unlike CISC, FAPAGOW provides endorsements of candidates and considers issues such as religion and generational allegiance, both of which complicate the interests of potential voters.
“There are concerns about growing distrust in the government and declining confidence in the democratic process in the Filipino-American community and beyond,” said FAPAGOW President Ador Pereda Yano, describing it as progressive but nonpartisan. “We haven’t figured out how to get all the different perspectives involved, but we want as many people as possible to be eligible to sign up.”
special event
For CISC customers, traditional access to voting information in English may not be available.
That included “all the emails, the English-language TV commercials — all in English,” Itti said.
So CISC invites clients to a “voting party”. These are groups of dozens of clients who often meet in the organization’s premium event room. There, staff share information in their native language.
This includes reading ballots and candidates’ statements aloud, which the King County election translates into multiple languages.
It also includes directing customers to use the City of Seattle’s Democracy Voucher program. Using the program, any permanent resident or voter in the city can donate up to $100 to a candidate of their choice.
At one poll, a staff member presented a slideshow about the program to a group of 30 customers.
“A lot of people have questions,” Ettie said.
On October 30, CISC will host the annual Rice Campaign with the Chinese American Citizens Coalition (CACA), which includes the opportunity to register to vote.
But Itti stressed that customers come every day for help understanding issues like email.
Caseworkers can use these opportunities to share information about voting.
“We encourage eligible voter registration because participation is an important foundation of the democratic process,” Itti said.
strategic outreach
FAPAGOW, in partnership with the National Federation of Filipino American Associations, held its most recent voter registration in Mill Creek in early October.
But one of the main components of its outreach is the recognition of candidates.
Its board of directors has spent years aligning its principles with what it sees as the different views of the Filipino-American community in Washington state.
These include an emphasis on climate and environmental justice, racial and economic justice in education, employment and contracting, and culturally and linguistically accessible and affordable health, human and housing services.
FAPAGOW also recently stood in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and sent a letter to local and state officials calling on them to change policing, provide mental health professionals for the homeless, increase black community oversight of government, and focus on Those hardest hit by COVID-19 include Black, Native American and communities of color.
Using these principles, the organization has endorsed candidates who may have differing policies but share common priorities in helping immigrants and communities of color.
“For example, U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier and U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal have different policy focuses, and Rep. Jayapal is more progressive, but they have enough common interests, such as human rights and social justice, that we all support,” Yano said.
Mediation
Like other community groups that work with clients whose primary language is not English, CISC is often called upon to act as a bridge between the government and its clients.
“Every city seems to be emailing us asking for civic engagement,” Etty said. “However, we are just one of many agencies that the government should reach out to.”
He said family associations, Asian counselling and referral services and other stakeholders can and do connect policymakers with communities.
According to Itti, there are five levels of community engagement, starting at the most basic and progressing to the most empowering: inform, consult, engage, collaborate, and community-led.
However, CISC is sometimes limited in its ability to work with outside agencies. It is staffed with languages such as Cantonese, Mandarin and Taishan. For Vietnamese and Spanish, there are only a few.
Meanwhile, it’s easy to walk into its Chinatown International District (CID) location, with hundreds of people doing so every week. But for other locations, customers mostly need to take a bus or drive, which makes it relatively difficult.
The solution, Ettie suggested, is to involve the government in long-term outreach efforts, rather than one-off or “transactional” efforts.
“We can do more of these outreach activities, and the ongoing engagement will be more effective because it will allow us to build more capacity,” Etty said.
Splice outreach
For FAPAGOW, it’s a balancing act of reaching out to one of the largest Asian-American communities in Washington State — a state of 170,000 to 200,000 Filipino Americans.
Religion, generational differences and changing views among community members mean that “FAPAGOW hasn’t figured it out, and it’s hard to describe different political leanings,” Yano said.
“Some families have been here since the 1920s or 1930s, others probably belong to the group of new immigrants that have mostly arrived since 1965,” Yano said after the Marcos regime came to power.
While most Filipino-Americans are Catholic, opinions on sensitive topics like reproductive rights can vary widely depending on their generation and other different experiences.
“It was a challenge,” Yano said.
FAPAGOW leaders have also faced challenges in reaching younger generations — including those whose families have lived here for centuries, and those who have recently arrived from the Philippines.
While they are concerned about American issues, they are also enthusiastic about the Philippines.
“As we sought to engage with the younger generation, we found that those who came here to study were interested in the Philippines, helping to overcome injustice and inequality in the Philippines,” he said. “But the younger generation born here also wants to stay connected to their homeland and find their own identity and heritage. So both groups are keen to protest human rights abuses that should be mitigated.”
Dolores Sibonga, the first member of the Seattle Filipino-American Council and a current advisor to FAPAGOW, wrote in a blog post on the organization’s homepage about the importance of reaching out to the younger generation.
“You would think that at 89, I wouldn’t worry about being young. However, I’m worried that young people will run for elections in November and we’ll lose any vestiges of democracy that still exist today,” she wrote.
Sibonga said young voters could rally around issues such as universal healthcare, the Green New Deal and economic justice.
“And just to show you how much your vote is: 1 in 100,000 votes in US elections and 1 in 15,000 in state elections over the past 100 years. for the candidate who leads or wins by one vote.”
To view the complete list of endorsements by FAPAGOW, visit fapagow.org.
To learn about CISC’s upcoming rice cultivation activities in partnership with CACA, please visit cacaseattle.org/index.html.
Mahlon can reach info@nwasianweekly.com.
