Cut Fruit Collective

About the Organization:

Cut Fruit Collective is a SF Bay Area grassroots group creating art for AAPI community care. We see a colorful future where all AAPI communities thrive and feel seen, heard, and celebrated. We work to support AAPI artists, amplify AAPI activists, invest in vulnerable AAPI communities, and build coalitions across AAPI communities and beyond.

The Issue:

In the San Francisco Bay Area and across much of America, the origins of many working-class AAPI heritage neighborhoods grew from exclusion and racist development policies. This history and the intersecting issues of gentrification, racial violence, and political neglect affect the most vulnerable in our community making them susceptible to crime, hate incidents, and mental health crises. Recent national news coverage has brought light to the violence that these communities have faced. However this negative media coverage creates more distress and sows divisions within the community. Asian elders are particularly affected – they make up a large percentage of the residents in these neighborhoods.

It’s clear that these neighborhoods need economic and social support so that small businesses, residents, and visitors can all thrive together for generations to come. Without community support and creative solutions, these neighborhoods, and their cultural legacy will disappear, along with the crucial resources that they provide to working class AAPI people.

The Solution:

Cut Fruit Collective believes the solution is rooted in creativity and unity, rather than fear. We emphasize creative expression and celebration because in collective liberation movements, joy is an act of resistance. By empowering residents and community members with creative tools, we uncover novel yet sustainable approaches to community care.

While we recognize that there are already many on-the-ground activists and orgs in these heritage neighborhoods doing important work, it is often difficult for the general public to see or get involved in the work due to generational and cultural divides. To bridge the gap, we bring new creative energy that continues to honor and uplift vulnerable AAPI neighborhoods. We do this through placekeeping, capacity building, and community building.

Our first focus is creative placekeeping. It is a collaborative process that engages and inspires residents and visitors alike to reimagine and strengthen their connection to an existing place and neighborhood. As many of the working class AAPI neighborhoods in the Bay Area remain vulnerable to gentrification, we are mindful of standard “placemaking” approaches that disregard the existing ecosystems in neighborhoods.
Our second focus is capacity building. Our creative services program connects AAPI artists and designers to help serve the needs of AAPI heritage small businesses and community organizations. We also provide creative support for community fundraisers for instance in our Feeding Seniors campaign, we pulled in artists to contribute to a raffle that fundraised $7K+ for a partnering Asian owned farm to provide AAPI seniors with locally grown, culturally relevant fresh produce.
Our third focus is community building through both online and in person activities. We provide a platform for AAPI artists and creatives to share their creations and experiences. Through social media we also mobilize our audience to support neighborhood initiatives.

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.