Activists Biographies Brief bios of API women activists featured on T-shirts and membership gifts.
Arundhati Roy Arundhati Roy is an Indian author, actress, and political activist. Her mother successfully sued for the right of women to inherit an equal share of their fathers’ estates. She’s a Man Booker prize winner, and controversial author on subjects such as the caste system, the US war on terror, struggles for ecological and economic justice, and intersections between poverty, gender, and violence. In 2010 she was charged with sedition for her essay in support of Kashmir’s independence from India. Known for composing essays that are searingly critical of power and abuse, Roy published a compendium aptly named, “My Seditious Heart.” On the pandemic, Roy wrote, "We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice or hatred… Or we can walk through it lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world."
Haunani Kay Trask Dr. Haunani Kay Trask was a scholar and activist who, along with her sister, Mililani Trask, created Ka Lahui Hawaii, an organization that promotes self-determination for Native Hawaiians. Dr. Trask was unwavering in her efforts educate and fight for Hawaiian sovereignty. Ka Lahui drew up a constitution for Hawaii to operate as a nation within a nation, much like Native American tribal nations, but it failed to pass in the state legislature. Dr. Trask founded the University of Hawaii’s Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, and is considered a creator of the field. She was a vocal leader in anti-colonial thought and action throughout her lifetime. “Hawaiian at heart: nothing said about loss violence, death by hundreds of thousands.” from the poem, “Colonization,” by Haunani Kay Trask
Kamala Harris Kamala Devi Harris is the first woman, first Black American, first South Asian American to serve as Vice President of the United States of America beginning 2022. She is also the highest-ranking woman in U.S. history. Vice President Harris is the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris, two immigrants from India and Jamaica respectively, who met in their doctoral programs at UC Berkeley. Both were civil rights activists who involved their daughters at a young age in activism. Harris’ maternal grandparents engaged in the fight for Indian independence, and her grandmother fought for women’s rights in India. Her mother raised her and her sister to be proud Black women, noting that despite being biracial, they would always be seen as Black. Vice President Harris has a long history of public service, beginning in the 90’s with her work prosecuting child sex assault cases in Alameda county, CA. In her role as San Francisco DA, she created a program for first-time drug offenders to earn a high school degree and find employment. As Attorney General of CA, she created the first Children’s Justice bureau, and successfully won multi-billion dollar settlements for Californians whose homes were foreclosed on and for students and veterans who had been taken advantage of by for-profit universities. As a U.S. Senator, her bipartisan anti-lynching bill passed, and her legislation to preserve Historically Black Colleges and Universities became law. As Vice President, Kamala Harris continues to advocate for equity and justice for diverse communities in the United States. “My mother would look at me and she’d say, ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last.’”
Mabel Ping-Hua Lee Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, an immigrant from Guangzhou China, was a women’s right’s activist and young leader in the suffrage movement at a time when Chinese immigrants were not allowed to become American citizens, let alone vote. As a teen she rode on horseback to lead a suffrage parade in New York city attended by 10,000 people and was featured in the New York Times May 1912 for her activism. Even after the 19th amendment (allowing American women to vote) was ratified in 1920, many people of color were still prohibited from voting. Lee remained undeterred from continuing to fight for equal rights for women even though Chinese Americans would not have the right to vote until 1943 with the passage of the Magnuson Act, which granted Chinese the ability to naturalize as American citizens. Lee was the first Chinese woman to graduate with a PhD in economics from Columbia University in 1921. Lee continued her father’s work in Christian ministry and opened a clinic with wrap-around services (before the term was coined) for Chinese empowerment, which included health services, kindergarten, vocational training, and English language lessons. “For no nation can ever make real and lasting progress in civilization unless its women are following close to its men if not actually abreast with them.” Malala Yousafzai Malala Yousafzai, education activist, is the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She was born in Mingora, Pakistan to parents who believed that girls should have every opportunity that boys have. When the Taliban took control of her hometown, they prohibited girls from attending school. Because Malala spoke out on behalf of girls’ rights to education, she was targeted and shot in the face on her way home from school. After surviving a near-fatal wound, Malala and her father, a school teacher, established the Malala fund, a charity dedicated to providing opportunities for girls to gain an education. Today she continues her international work to meet girls facing social barriers to equality with men in terms of their rights to self-determination and education. Nearly a decade has passed since Malala was shot, and six surgeries later, she continues to need to address the damage that was done. As she recovered from a surgery to reduce lymphatic fluids in 2021, she wrote letters and made calls to help people fleeing the oppressive regime in Afghanistan. She wrote, “Nine years later, I am still recovering from just one bullet. The people of Afghanistan have taken millions of bullets over the last four decades…my heart breaks for those whose names we will forget or never even know, whose cries for help will go unanswered,” “With more than 130 million girls out of school today, there is more work to be done. I hope you will join my fight for education and equality. Together, we can create a world where all girls can learn and lead.” Mazie Hirono Senator Mazie Hirono is the first Asian American and first woman Senator from Hawaii. She is also the nation’s first Buddhist senator. When Hirono was 8 her mother fled Japan to Hawaii due to her father’s alcoholism. Raised by a single working class mom, Hirono attended the University of Hawaii and later Georgetown University for her law degree. She served for many years in the Hawaii State House of Representatives and one term as Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii. As a Senator, Hirono co-authored the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act, which was signed into law in 2021. This legislation came about during the intense surge in anti-Asian hate during the Covid-19 pandemic. The law will provide resources and outreach to help with hate-crime reporting and prosecution. Hirono has also advocated for family reunification for Filipino veterans of WWII, many of whom were unable to bring their families despite the fact that they fought on behalf of the United States (but were not citizens at the time due to the territorial status of the Philippines). Hirono was also a staunch defender of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who came forward to testify that then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her. Hirono has also been a strong voice against racist and misogynist political tactics, which were rampant during the 45th presidential term. She also called for the resignations of Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley for their opposition to certifying the 2020 Presidential election electoral votes. “The defense to slander is the truth, and sometimes the truth hurts.” Terisa Siagatonu Terisa Siagatonu is a poet, educator, and community leader. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and is Samoan in ancestry. She is a co-founder of Root Slam, a community gathering to promote poetry “centering the voices of Black, indigenous, and people of color artists; queer, trans, gender non-conforming, femme, and women poets; working class/low-income, disabled, im/migrant and undocumented folks.” She is a founding member of the Drawbridge Collective, a cross-cultural group of multiracial educators and poets who actively reject the artificial lines drawn between poetry on the page and poetry performed on stage. With Youth Speaks, Terisa works with talented young people across the nation as a poet mentor, coach, educator, and coordinator. As a marriage and family therapist, she works with activism/organizing as healing and gives workshops on intergenerational trauma. Terisa is part of a rising generation of artists/activists who utilize expressive arts and education as tools for healing and empowerment. “I am still alive because whatever wants me dead does not know: that you cannot kill somebody who isn’t afraid anymore.” Check out this poetry slam: https://youtu.be/ZpgZxyEmSy8
Thenmozhi Soundararajan Thenmozhi Soundararajan, aka the Dalit Diva on Twitter, is an activist and leader for caste equity. She is the director of Equality Labs, an organization that centers the voices of caste oppressed, queer, and religious minorities in evolving identities of the South Asian diaspora. It is a “power-building organization that uses community research, political base-building, culture-shifting art, and digital security to end the oppression of caste apartheid, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and religious intolerance” (Equalitylabs.org). She is also a singer and transmedia technologist. Upon graduating from UC Berkeley, she founded the international media training organization, Third World Majority, and taught in Europe, Africa, Latin America and South Asia. In 2003, she was named as one of the Top Ten Political Forces in Hip Hop by The Source and one of the Top Ten Political Forces in Hip Hop by the Utne Reader. Soundararajan articulates the critical need to examine technology practices that serve to perpetuate dangerous caste oppression as well as draws relevant comparisons to other intersectional forms of oppression. Her work at Equality Labs serves to help organizations address caste apartheid toward a more equitable future for all. Take a listen to this interview with Thenmozhi Soundararajan by the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass; it’s a master class on the intersections of caste inequity, race, immigration, technology, violence. https://publicinfrastructure.org/podcast/54-thenmozhi-soundararajan/
Judy Chu (written by Michi Fu, PhD) Judy Chu was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in July 2009. She represents the 27th Congressional District, which includes Pasadena and the west San Gabriel Valley of southern California. Rep. Chu currently serves on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over legislation pertaining to taxes, revenues, Social Security, and Medicare. In that Committee, Rep. Chu is a member of the Subcommitees on Health and Human Resources, giving her oversight over healthcare reform and crucial safety net programs. She also serves on the House Small Business Committee, which has oversight of the Small Business Administration, and is a member of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access. Chu was first elected to the Board of Education for Garvey School District in 1985. From there, she was elected to the Monterey Park City Council, where she served as Mayor three times. She then was elected to the State Assembly and then California’s elected tax board, known as the State Board of Equalization. In 2009, she became the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress in history. “It's clear that common sense does not apply here. When things go well, Wall Street executives get rich. When their reckless behavior takes our economy awry, they still get rich. And who ends up footing the bill? The American people.”
Helen Zia (written by Sherry Wang, PhD) Journalist, writer, and activist Helen Zia shares insights from her extraordinary life and career in an interview with SCU Professor Sherry Wang, PhD of Counseling Psychology. Zia, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, grew up in Newark NJ and was a member of the first graduating class of women from Princeton. Her journey has included pursuing medical school, working as a construction worker, auto worker, and community organizer. She is the author of several acclaimed books and is known for her activism that ranges from human rights to countering hate violence and homophobia. She is renowned in the Asian American community for her leadership in the landmark civil rights case of anti-Asian violence in the 1982 hate killing of Vincent Chin. “To be silent is a privilege.” Bios below written by Susana Ming Lowe, PhD
Kala Bagai Kala Bagai and her family immigrated from modern day Pakistan to San Francisco, CA in 1915. They endured racism whereby White neighbors literally locked them out of the home they purchased in Berkeley. Fearing for her children’s lives, the family decided to return to San Francisco. In 1923, a landmark case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court ruled no South Asians could be US citizens because, though they are Caucasian, they are not White. Kala Bagai’s husband, whose US citizenship was then revoked, committed suicide in protest of the US government essentially rendering him an interned person. Kala Bagai subsequently became an immigrant, cultural, and women’s rights activist. She was a community builder, promoting Indian culture in the US, and opened her home to many displaced refugees from India’s partition in 1947. “I grew up thinking leadership had to be loud and top-down. But Kala Bagai offer[ed] a different model, leading through acts of relation, care, resilience, and collective action.” A. Chatterjee (2019)
Queen Lili`uokalani Queen Lili`uokalani was the last monarch to rule the Hawaiian Kingdom. She was a fierce leader who had the support of the majority of Hawaiians to maintain sovereignty against annexation to the United States. She presided over a nation that had universal suffrage (over a century before the US), universal healthcare, and 95% literacy. Though she was forcefully removed from office, she maintained the fight throughout her life to take back Hawaii for its people. She was also a prolific composer, and penned the song ‘Aloha Oe’ (farewell to thee), which has become a symbol of farewell to Hawai`I as a sovereign nation. "I, Liliʻuokalani of Hawaiʻi.... do hereby protest against the ratification of a certain treaty, which . . . has been signed at Washington . . . purporting to cede those Islands to the territory and dominion of the United States. I declare such a treaty to be an act of wrong toward the native and part-native people of Hawaiʻi, an invasion of the rights of the ruling chiefs, in violation of international rights both toward my people and toward friendly nations with whom they have made treaties, the perpetuation of the fraud whereby the constitutional government was overthrown, and, finally, an act of gross injustice to me.” —Excerpted from a Letter to President McKinley Protesting the Annexation of Hawaiʻi, 1897
Jean Lau Chin Dr. Chin was beloved by many (especially in the Society for the Psychology of Women) and internationally recognized as an authority on diversity leadership, cultural competence in psychological practice, women’s issues and feminism. She was the first Asian American licensed as a psychologist in Massachusetts. She was a pioneer in bringing gender and race issues to the forefront in leadership development. She encouraged and mentored countless women of color to chose leadership roles, to cope with both racism and sexism, and become effective leaders in their field. She was a Fulbright Specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where she developed a women’s studies degree at the university. Her last work published before her death was about the coronavirus—and the mistreatment of people of Asian descent it caused—in “Global & Culturally Diverse Leadership in the 21st Century: Crisis Leadership During the Coronavirus Pandemic and Xenophobia.” Published in the International Leadership Association’s ILA Interface “So the common misperception that ethnic minority women are not advanced enough in their thinking about women’s issues is actually not true… you can see evidence as early as 1929 of a strong women’s movement in China that actually paralleled or exceeded some of the thinking that occurred in the US in the sixties.”
Yuri Kochiyama In 1942 at the age of 21, Yuri Kochiyama was incarcerated at Camp Jerome in Arkansas under Executive order 9066. There she developed a new consciousness as a Japanese American. After WWII while living in low-income housing in Harlem, Kochiyama befriended Malcolm X and fought alongside him in the Black liberation movement. She spent her life joining others in solidarity for Puerto Rican independence, freeing US political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, and protesting imperialism in the Vietnam war. She was a tireless labor organizer and was a key figure in achieving US government accountability and compensation for Japanese American incarceration. Truly a believer in the intersectionality of systems of oppression, Kochiyama also organized against the racial profiling of Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians post- 9/11. “Build bridges, not walls.”
Asuncion Miteria Austria Dr. Austria was a trailblazing Filipino American psychologist, scholar, and leader. She achieved Fellow status in a number of Divisions at the American Psychological association. She was a member of the Council of Representatives in the American Psychological Association, representing the Society for the Psychology of Women (Division 35). She was also Chair of the Diversity Committee for the Division of Clinical Psychology. At Cardinal Stritch University in Wisconsin, she developed the university's psychology graduate program, created most of the department's courses, and launched the student newsletter and honorary society. She also established and developed the first Institutional Review Board and served as its chair for many years. She co-authored the Handbook for Women Mentors: Transcending Barriers of Stereotype, Race, and Ethnicity. “A network can pay lip service to the values of collaboration, but actually understanding and succeeding at collaboration takes more than lip service.”
Grace Lee Boggs Grace Lee Boggs was a Chinese American activist in the Black power movement in Detroit and a leader in fighting for women’s rights, safe housing, Asian American and labor rights. She was such an effective activist/ally to Black Americans that the FBI, in her file, assumed she was Afro-Chinese. She earned a PhD in philosophy and yet struggled to find work because employers would say they didn’t hire “Orientals.” Struggling to make ends meet in Chicago, living in rat infested housing, she began her life as an activist for safe living conditions. She and activist husband James Boggs together wrote Revolution And Evolution In The Twentieth Century; in 1998, she published an autobiography, Living For Change; and in 2011, she co-wrote The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism For The Twenty-First Century with Scott Kurashige. “I don't know what the next American revolution is going to be like, but we might be able to imagine it if your imagination were rich enough."
Patsy Takemoto Mink Patsy Mink was born in Maui and became the first Asian American woman and first woman of color elected to Congress. In 1953, she was the first Japanese American to be admitted to the Hawaii Bar and the first woman to be licensed as an attorney in Hawaii. Mink was a champion of women’s, children, and minority rights, most notably as the co-sponsor of the Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. She was also the first ever Asian American to run for President on a platform against US involvement in the Vietnam war. Mink co-founded the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus in 1994 and protested the confirmation of Judge Clarence Thomas after allegations of sexual harassment came forth. In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. “It is easy enough to vote right and be consistently with the majority . . . but it is more often more important to be ahead of the majority and this means being willing to cut the first furrow in the ground and stand alone for a while if necessary.”