​Washington, DC – Yesterday, the administration released its latest budget that outlined significant cuts to social welfare programs, tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, and increases to border security, immigration deportation funding, and law enforcement. The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO (APALA) condemns this latest budget, which will widen the gap between the rich and poor and further enable a corporate, anti-worker, anti-immigrant, and racist agenda.
 
“We are not surprised by this budget – it confirms everything we have seen and knew would continue to happen,” stated Johanna Puno Hester, APALA National President and Assistant Executive Director of the United Domestic Workers, AFSCME Local 3930. “Our broken criminal injustice system already disproportionately impacts communities of color. With the government’s blessing for more agents and more detention beds, the private prison industry will continue to profit on the incarceration of Black and Brown bodies.”
 
APALA Executive Director Gregory A. Cendana added: “Budget cuts to social welfare programs and the repeal and replacement of critical healthcare will be detrimental to millions of people and working families throughout the country. The budget serves only to line the pockets of the wealthy 1% while taking away essential services for struggling families and communities only trying to make ends meet. We are calling on Congress to put people over profit and resist this xenophobic and white supremacist agenda.” 
 
Hester continued: “As an immigrant myself, I am disgusted that more taxpayer dollars are going towards the mass criminalization and deportation of immigrant and refugee communities. Instead of investing directly into workers, students, and putting more people on the path to the middle class, we’re seeing moves to a more militarized state. This administration has repeatedly shown its relentlessness to destroy our democracy and the values of freedom and diversity we hold dear. That’s why it’s important now more than ever to resist, organize, and fight back against these oppressive tactics.”

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Honolulu, Hawaii – Last Monday, on December 12, members of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO (APALA) National Executive Board and staff convened a roundtable with the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement (CNHA) to discuss the importance and alignment of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) issues within the broader Asian American community as it relates to mass incarceration and economic justice. 
 
Convening at CNHA member organization Keiki O Ka Aina Family Learning Center for its work to connect children with their mothers in the system, roundtable speakers included Michelle Kauhane, CNHA President and CEO; Annelle Amaral, member of Hawaii Paroling Authority and president of the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs, Oahu Council; and a formerly incarcerated staff member at the center who graciously shared her story of reentry into society.
 
“The school-to-prison pipeline undoubtedly disproportionately affects Native Hawaiians as well,” commented CNHA President & CEO Michelle Kauhane. “40% of Hawaii’s inmate population is Native Hawaiian. We need to be looking at the root causes of our overly incarcerated population – lack of a living wage, poor public schools, an unfair criminal justice system.”
 
APALA National President Johanna Puno Hester added: “It is so important that we include Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in all policy discussions including efforts to reform the criminal justice system because there is so much alignment with the incarceration of Asian American folks more broadly. Even still, NHPI populations also experience different strains like being separated from their families as brothers and sisters are sent to do their time on the continental U.S.”
 
“We’re so excited to welcome Michelle Kauhane to APALA's advisory committee on NHPI issues, co-chaired by APALA National Executive Board Members Executive Secretary-Treasurer Josie Camacho and State Director of the United Public Workers, Dayton Nakanelua,” added APALA Executive Director Gregory A. Cendana. “Hawaii has the highest density of Asian American and Pacific Islander union members, and with this newly formed committee we hope to better voice the perspectives of the NHPI community in our advocacy, organizing and movement building.”
 
The APALA National Executive Board passed a resolution reaffirming our commitment to uplift Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander issues. To view the full resolution, please click here. APALA continues to advocate for a reformed criminal justice system through AAPIs Beyond Bars, a coalition of labor, education, civil rights, and criminal justice organizations addressing mass incarceration and deportation in the AAPI community. 
 

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The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), AFL-CIO was founded in 1992 as the first and only national organization for Asian Pacific American union members to advance worker, immigrant and civil rights. For more information, visit www.apalanet.org and follow @APALAnational
 
The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement (CNHA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the well being of Hawaii through the cultural, economic, political and community development of Native Hawaiians.

​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.
 

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