API RISE

About the Organization:

API RISE was founded to empower the Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander American communities and specifically those individuals who have been impacted by the criminal justice system. We aspire to be an organization that celebrates diversity through inclusion and to build upon knowledge, resources and organizing to undo the stigma and shame that silences youth, formerly and currently incarcerated people and their loved ones.

The Issue:

A full half of all API Prisoners are under 27. One-fifth of API inmates serve sentences 25 years or more– the longest of any racial group. Longer sentences means greater challenges for successful integration. Once released, there’s a need for these formerly incarcerated folks to access job training and work. Getting an effective pardon campaign together requires galvanizing community support. Changing legislation and gaining support for our population means building solidarity with other communities.

Inside prisons, API prisoners have a need for parole board hearing and reentry support. And outside, there’s a need to shift local and stage public policy advocacy primarily around carceral and immigration reforms. Formerly incarcerated APIs are subject to ICE holds and the threat of deportation. The primary challenges/issues facing our members are transitioning from incarceration, which includes obtaining documentation (SSN, work permit), employment and education, cultural and language barriers, housing, and transportation. Many of our undocumented members face the risk of deportation.

The growing Asian American prison population and the impact of incarceration in our communities often goes unaddressed because of the cultural shame and stigma of incarceration in our families. Humanizing these experiences, advocating for support from the general public and inviting the healing for these communities has all been made more difficult by the limited popular narratives of what API identity even is, let alone what APIs who’ve experienced incarceration are actually dealing with. Asian Pacific Islander Native Hawaiian Identity encompasses over 50 ethnic subgroups. These nuances are further erased when considering how “prison politics” segregate inmates by race, often lumping Asians in with a larger group of “Others” and purposely segregating Asians from Black, White and Latinx prisoners– complicating mental health concerns and creating tensions that can follow them upon re-entry to society. Formerly incarcerated API struggle with maintaining connection to a cultural identity in and out of prison.

The Solution:

Our current programs address these problems with a four-prong approach:

Prison-In-Reach: Our membership participates in letter writing campaigns of those on the inside, parole board hearing support, research and re-entry support.
Member/ Community Care Support: We support our members through weekly meetings and events where we spread the word on pardon campaigns, peer healing groups, linkage and referrals to other support systems, all as we build solidarity with other marginalized communities.
Policy Advocacy and Social Enterprises: We do local and state public policy advocacy primarily around carceral and immigration reforms.
Social Enterprise: We are exploring viable enterprise opportunities to both create jobs for our members and revenue for the organization.

Manisha G. Bewtra, AICP

Planning, Mobility, and Development Advisor to Tucson Mayor Regina Romero

Manisha Bewtra, AICP (she/her) is Mayor Romero’s Planning, Mobility, and Development Advisor. In this role, she leverages her passion for planning for thriving, healthy, and inclusive communities with her love for policy-making and politics as the Mayor’s liaison on transportation and land use issues. Manisha is an experienced public process facilitator and project manager and works collaboratively with the Mayor’s team and city departments to apply an equity lens to all city initiatives.
Manisha has built her career on bringing divergent perspectives together, facilitating conversations around change, and generating data-informed solutions that move communities forward. She is driven by public service and champions equitable policies and inclusive community engagement.
Prior to her current role, she worked at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council in Boston as a senior regional planner and the manager of the analytics team, at the Massachusetts Housing Partnership where she was a statewide technical assistance provider, as an adjunct city planning instructor for Master’s degree program courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and at Arizona State University, and in municipal government and nonprofit community development organizations in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Chandler, Arizona.
Manisha has served on various equity-focused organizations and committees and is a graduate of Emerge Massachusetts, the Initiative for Diversity in Civic Leadership, and the Massachusetts Commonwealth Seminar, three organizations dedicated to training underrepresented groups to influence public policy and to run for office. She has a Master of City Planning degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a BA in Economics and Art from The University of Iowa, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners. She currently serves as a member at large for the American Planning Association Arizona Southern Section and is a member of the executive team for the Asian American and Political Islander Caucus for the Arizona Democratic Party.
Before moving to Tucson in the summer of 2020, she lived in the Boston area for twelve years. During her years in Melrose, Massachusetts, she served as a Human Rights Commissioner and subsequently as a City Councilor. When elected to the Melrose City Council, she became the first person of color ever to serve in elected office in Melrose. She grew up in Iowa and identifies as Desi/Indian-American. She, her husband, and her son felt welcomed and right at home in Tucson when they moved here – even in spite of a pandemic and searing summer heat.

Arnie Saiki

research, writer, program director

Broadly focusing on regional economic and geopolitical themes in the Asia and Pacific regions, Arnie Saiki is currently leading a working group on data, statistics and valuation in the Pacific. His book “Economic and Ecological Accounting: Towards Intemerate Values,” was published last year by the Pacific Conference of Churches, the Pacific Theological College and the University of the South Pacific.

Since the publication, this campaign has been introduced to the Ecological and Economic Justice program at the World Council of Churches and he is participating in a G8 Interfaith forum for the inclusion of Wellbeing indicators into our economic accounts.

While national statistics and ecological accounting normally fall under the purview of government, academic or international institutions, Arnie has been campaigning in democratizing our ecological data, seeking support for a proof-of-concept accounting program that would enable poor, impacted, and indigenous peoples to actively participate in how we account for our socio and economic biodiversity. Intemerate Accounting is an equation that helps to correct accounting disparities that have, to a large extent, excluded the Global South. Revising our accounting system can provide access and opportunities that cross wide campaign sectors, bringing hope, action and efficacy to reverse climate change, restore our ecological biodiversity, and redistribute global wealth more equitably.

Arnie has been actively promoting and working on global justice campaigns since 2007 when he received a “We the People” grant from the Hawai’i Council of the Humanities for his work on Hawai’i Statehood. He has organized conferences with Hawaiian national independence groups, managed the Save Rapanui campaign after the Chilean military forced a lockdown of Easter Islanders. Arnie spoke at the World Bank representing the Pacific Island Forum, and participated in discussions around regionalism in the Pacific. He was recently appointed the US-Pacific Diplomacy and Solidarity Mission for the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), and is on the management team of the Deep Seabed Mining Campaign.

In 2011, Arnie received the blessing from Dr. Kekuni Blaisdell to organize a counter-conference in Honolulu while APEC was there and coordinated the Moana Nui conferences, an international partnership between the International Forum on Globalization and Pua Mohala I Ka Po. For the last ten years he has been campaigning on issues around trade, development, ecological resources, indigenous issues and militarization in the Pacific.

His essays, “TPP at the End of the Line: a briefing on economic cooperation and capacity building” was published in American Quarterly by John Hopkins University Press, and “Manifesting the Liquid Continent,” was published by Yunnan National University, as part of the 1st International conference on Asia and Pacific Ethnology and Anthropology.