North Carolina Asian Americans Together

North Carolina Asian Americans Together (NCAAT) is the first pan-Asian social justice organization in North Carolina and one of the only such organizations in the South. NCAAT emerged in 2016 in an urgent effort to help Asian American voices in North Carolina to be heard and represented. Our mission is to support equity and justice for all by fostering community among AAPIs and allies statewide through civic engagement, leadership development, community development, and grassroots mobilization. The organization serves all North Carolina residents who identify as Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI), an “inter-ethnic-pan-Asian American self-defining political group.”

Here's the Issue:

Fighting systematic erasure and the rampant co-opting of our lived experiences by mainstream media has long been a struggle for Asian Americans. The myth of the “model minority” affects multiple generations of AAPIs and attempts to pacify and silence parts of our community while elevating a false ideal stereotype: the unaffiliated, relatively wealthy, highly educated, and non-confrontational Asian American immigrant. Unfortunately, this widespread ignorance of the real diversity of AAPI identities, interests, and concerns has proven to have dire consequences, particularly during COVID-19. Assessing Asians Americans as a monolith conceals the needs of lower-income, working-class, and refugee peoples, and such misconceptions have led to some communities receiving no outreach regarding vaccine safety or access; others have been plagued by misinformation. When our stories are inaccurately told, they become manipulated against our community interests. NCAAT seeks to empower AAPI peoples with the agency and voice to represent themselves and their communities.

Our Solution:

iNCite storytelling workshops mobilize people powered through narrative change, and the Asian Solidarity and Action Project actualizes this change through community-led projects. iNCite stories is collaboration between Migrant Roots Media, NCAAT, and Amplified Voices.

In the workshop series, participants from AAPI and BIPOC communities in North Carolina will reflect on their own life stories within a larger historical context. The program spans 3 weekends and offers a $500 stipend, a mentor, and a series of skill-building educational workshops. Participants get to reflect deeply on the community, then collaboratively generate creative solutions on how to organize our community power.

iNCite stories acts as a creative starting point transitioning into NCAAT’s Asian Solidarity and Action Project (ASAP), a 5-month program that uplifts community voices, stories, and projects. Selected project leaders will receive a $1,000 – $1,500 stipend, consultation with a mentor of their choosing, and ongoing program planning support.

We're the right people to do the work because:

As the first pan-Asian social justice organization in NC and one of few in the South, NCAAT provides local Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders with organized and culturally-competent support that creates a pipeline for the next generation of leaders. In light of the harmful attention and violence turned upon us, in large part due to hateful rhetoric perpetuated by large or mainstream media sources, it is more important than ever for members of our community to raise their voices and share their stories. Our organization provides spaces for amplifying voices from underheard segments of Asian communities, and we provide the linguistic and narrative toolkits to correct misrepresentation, and supersede negative stereotypes and false myths about the AAPI community.

We work toward structural change alongside other BIPOC communities to dismantle systems of white supremacy. These communities are represented by our partner organizations and co-hosts Migrant Roots Media and Amplified Voices NC.

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.