APALA

  • About
    • About
    • Our Work
    • National Executive Board
    • National Staff
    • Opportunities
    • Contact us
  • COVID-19
    • Guidance to protect AAPI workers
    • COVID-19 Fund
    • Worker Resources
    • AAPI Worker Stories
  • Membership & Chapters
  • Take Action
    • Subscribe to Newsletter
    • Events
    • Donate
    • Young Leaders Council
    • Labor Toolkit on Anti-Asian Racism
    • Anti-Asian Violence Resources
    • Protest + Organizing Resources
  • Media
    • Publications
    • Press Releases
    • APALA in the News
  • Shop
  • About
    • About
    • Our Work
    • National Executive Board
    • National Staff
    • Opportunities
    • Contact us
  • COVID-19
    • Guidance to protect AAPI workers
    • COVID-19 Fund
    • Worker Resources
    • AAPI Worker Stories
  • Membership & Chapters
  • Take Action
    • Subscribe to Newsletter
    • Events
    • Donate
    • Young Leaders Council
    • Labor Toolkit on Anti-Asian Racism
    • Anti-Asian Violence Resources
    • Protest + Organizing Resources
  • Media
    • Publications
    • Press Releases
    • APALA in the News
  • Shop

Press Releases

AFL-CIO Constituency Groups Stand with Native Americans to Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline

9/19/2016

 
​Washington, DC - Together, the Labor Coalition for Community Action, which includes the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Pride at Work, rises in solidarity with Native Americans and our allies in protesting against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and defending Native lands from exploitation by corporations and the U.S. government. We advocate for a progressive labor movement rooted in dignity and respect of all peoples, including Native Americans and their families.

Though cited to bring 4,500 jobs, the Dakota Access Pipeline seriously threatens tribal sovereignty, sacred burial grounds, and the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux and potentially 17 million others. As organizations dedicated to elevating the struggles of our respective constituencies, we stand together to support our Native American kinfolk – one of the most marginalized and disenfranchised groups in our nation’s history – in their fight to protect their communities from further displacement and exploitation.

We recognize this systematic oppression that so intimately resonates with many communities of color and marginalized populations, whether it be fighting for lead-free water in Flint to uncontaminated water in North Dakota.

We remain committed to fighting the corporate interests that back this project and name this pipeline “a pipeline of corporate greed.” We challenge the labor movement to strategize on how to better engage and include Native people and other marginalized populations into the labor movement as a whole.

Lastly, we applaud the many labor unions working to create a new economy with good green jobs and more sustainable employment opportunities for all. We also encourage key stakeholders — labor unions including the building trades, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and others who would be impacted — to come together to discuss a collective resolution.

​As we just recently recognized Native American Women’s Equal Pay Day and as we approach November – a time that marks not only a significant change in our country’s leadership but also the celebration of Native American Heritage Month – we will continue to campaign and organize for a broader agenda that secures the rights for all working people in all communities. 
###
About The Labor Coalition for Community Action (LCCA) - The AFL-CIO’s constituency groups – the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Pride at Work are unions’ bridges to diverse communities, creating and strengthening partnerships to enhance the standard of living for all workers. The groups also promote the full participation of women and minorities in the union movement and ensure unions hear and respond to the concerns of the communities they represent.
​

#15YearsLater, We Continue to Rise for Freedom 

9/15/2016

 
​Washington, DC – This past Sunday, we marked fifteen years since 9/11 – a particular date of hurt and tragedy in our shared history that has also challenged the fabric of our country and what it means to be American.
 
Kinfolk from Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh American communities have been particularly affected facing unprecedented incidents of hate, racism, and bigotry as backlash from 9/11. In the past few months, we have witnessed arson at an Islamic Center in Florida, two gunned down in Queens, another stabbed to death also in Queens, a woman wearing a religious garb set on fire in New York, the murder of a man on his way to morning prayer, and many others whose stories go unnoticed by mainstream media and the larger national conversation.
 
“Even after 15 years later, we have seen too many hate crimes against our communities. It saddens and angers us to know that my friends and family can’t feel safe at home, work and in their communities,” stated Maf Misbah Uddin, APALA National Executive Board Member and Founder and President of the Alliance of South Asian American Labor (ASAAL). “We have so much more work to do to overcome this entrenched hate and racism within our society.”
 
“From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Japanese American internment to the Southeast Asian deportation crisis, our communities have endured the impact of profiling, criminalization and scrutiny,” stated APALA Executive Director Gregory Cendana highlighting the shared struggle. “Moving forward, we need to train and uplift more leaders at all levels of government, in our community, and in our schools who will stand up against all forms of xenophobia, racism and anti-Muslim hate.”
 
National President Johanna Hester added: “An individual’s experience in this country shouldn’t be based on one’s proximity to blackness or whiteness. APALA continues to rise for freedom -- freedom from surveillance, profiling, hate crimes on brown and black lives. The conflation of what it means to be American with anti-Muslim hate and Islamophobia must come to an end, and that includes reforming government policies that both exacerbate a climate of fear and encourage the mass criminalization of our bodies.”
 
APALA continues to partner with ASAAL, Muslim Advocates, South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), and the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA) to put an end to hate crimes and violence against Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh American communities. Below please find some helpful resources and recent actions in our shared struggle for freedom:
 
  • Track hate crimes with these resources from Muslim Advocates, SAALT, and Huffington Post.
  • Read more reflections on the 15th anniversary in Colorlines, Medium, and Huffington Post.
  • Read about NQAPIA’s joint action in Washington, DC this past weekend against legalized profiling.
  • Make a commitment to stand on the side of freedom by taking APALA’s #NotYourModelMinority Pledge. 
###

APALA Rises in Solidarity with Prisoner Strikes

9/12/2016

 
​Washington, DC – On September 9th, on the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison riot, prison inmates throughout the country kicked off a peaceful strike against the use of their forced labor and are calling for reforms to prison policies and practices and improved living conditions. The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO (APALA) rises in solidarity with these incarcerated folks and voices concern for use of forced labor in a criminal justice system built to criminalize communities of color, including Black folks and the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.
 
APALA National President Johanna Hester stated: “It is unacceptable that the use of forced labor in our prison system is a legalized and continued practice. The fact that a disproportionate amount of folks inside are people of color makes it even worse – it basically legalizes a form of modern day slavery within a system meant to cage in people of color, immigrants, and poor folks. APALA stands with incarcerated folks whose labor has too often and too long been exploited by the prison system.”
 
The strikes come at a time where community organizations and advocacy groups are urging the Department of Homeland Security and especially the Bureau of Prisons and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to follow the Department of Justice’s lead to end the use of private prisons and detainment centers. Abuse, mistreatment and poor living conditions are not uncommon in prisons and detention centers, especially in private operated institutions. 
 
“Prison labor has often been cited to reduce the cost of running prisons. Meanwhile, prisons and detention centers are becoming increasingly privatized, and the corporations behind the private prison industry profit from the free labor of inmates and this systematic mass incarceration of communities of color,” added APALA Executive Director Gregory A. Cendana. “Tactics like forced labor serve as a way to deprive folks of any dignity or worth of their work in society. Our criminal justice system needs to focus on restorative and transformative models of justice that value the person as a whole, and we’re calling on the labor movement as a whole to address the rights of workers inside.”
 
APALA is a proud member of AAPIs Beyond Bars, a coalition of labor, education, civil rights and criminal justice organizations that work to address mass incarceration and deportation in the AAPI community. With the coalition, APALA is working to push for more research and disaggregated data on accurate figures of AAPIs behind bars, to disrupt the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline, and to fight for the rights of formerly incarcerated folks and reforms in our criminal justice system.
 
###
<<Previous
Forward>>

    For Immediate Release

    Contact:
    apala[at]apalanet.org

    For full list of all press releases and statements, please click here.

    ​

    Archives

    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    April 2013
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    April 2011
    February 2011
    August 2007

    Categories

    All
    2016 Election
    AAPI Behind Bars
    AAPIs Beyond Bars
    #AAPIsResist
    Affirmative Action
    APAHM
    #BlackLivesMatter
    Black Lives Matter
    Civic Engagement
    Convention
    Corporate Accountability
    Criminal Justice Reform
    DACA
    DOL
    DREAMERs
    Economic Justice
    Education
    End Islamophobia
    Endorsements
    Every Vote Counts
    Gender Justice
    Gun Control
    Gun Violence
    Hate Crime
    Healthcare
    Health & Safety
    Immigration
    International Solidarity
    Leadership
    LGBTQ
    Living Wage
    Mass Criminalization
    Mass Incarceration
    National Executive Board
    NHPI
    Not Your Model Minority
    Police Brutality
    POTUS
    Racial Justice
    Reproductive Justice
    #ResistTrump
    Right To Organize
    SCOTUS
    TPP
    Trade Justice
    Unemployment
    Voter Education And Mobilization
    Women's Rights
    Workers' Rights
    Young Leaders Council

    RSS Feed

Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance
815 16th St. NW, 2nd Floor
Washington, DC 20006
202-800-5811 | info@apala.org

​Contact Us
Founded in 1992, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), AFL-CIO, is the first and only national organization of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) workers, most of whom are union members and our allies, building power for AAPI workers and communities.
Quick Navigation
About | Our Work | Chapters | Take Action | Media & Resources 
| Shop | Privacy Policy