Xīn Shēng | 心声 Project

Xīn Shēng | 心声 Project is a youth-led organization with 100+ volunteers across the world. Founded in June 2020, we are dedicated to combating in-language disinformation that often leaves the most marginalized AAPIs—recent immigrants, the elderly and non-English speakers—the most vulnerable. Our timely, culturally-sensitive, and multilingual content reaches hundreds of thousands of readers on WeChat and other digital platforms. We encourage intergenerational dialogue on a range of topics including racism, LGBTQIA+ issues, and class solidarity. Xīn Shēng Project is a model for how AAPI groups can establish in-language news media that respond to the specific needs of our communities.

Here's the Issue:

With over 1.5 million monthly users in the US, WeChat is among the largest social networks for Chinese Americans. Yet over time, WeChat has become a Petri dish of disinformation and incubator of radicalization.

On a day-to-day basis, WeChat peddles sensationalized headlines and conspiracy theories that leave the most marginalized AAPIs—recent immigrants, the elderly and non-English speakers—the most vulnerable.

The WeChat problem parallels dangers facing other AAPI communities who are similarly reliant on in-language reporting. Overlooking in-language media leaves AAPIs prone to disinformation, but also misses tremendous opportunities to build inclusive and empowering narratives for AAPI communities to support one another.

At a time when cross-racial coalitions to #StopAAPIHate and vaccination campaigns are more important than ever, the ethno-nationalism and disinformation stoked by WeChat pose an immediate threat to the wellbeing of all AAPI communities. Without dedicated intervention, WeChat’s damage will only worsen.

Our Solution:

The solution to in-language disinformation requires both timely, culturally-sensitive, and multilingual counter-narratives in addition to sustained engagement with AAPI immigrant communities.

Xīn Shēng | 心声 Project is committed to this relational work. We leverage over 80 community partners and a base of 100+ volunteers to provide intergenerational, culturally-sensitive, and multilingual counter-narratives to otherwise unchallenged disinformation in the WeChat media-space.

Our team researches, writes, designs, and translates articles for dissemination onto WeChat. Not only do we combat disinformation, but we also proactively prevent it by building political consciousness amongst Chinese Americans through building WeChat groups, leading teach-ins, and facilitating intergenerational family conversations.

People’s unique experiences and perspectives must be bridged in order for them to feel seen, heard, and empowered. With meaningful interventions, not only can we combat disinformation, but we can also write stronger narratives for AAPI communities—both on and offline.

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

The crux of our project is that our audience is our community. Our team has watched our family and community members succumb to WeChat disinformation. We understand firsthand how challenging it is to have complex and compassionate conversations about race and social justice among AAPI families. Yet, people are most likely to listen to and talk with members of their own community whom they love and trust.

That is why our 100+ volunteers are a coalition of 1.5-generation and later Chinese Americans, international students, and immigrant parents, among others. We also have over 80 partnerships with community organizers, non-profits, WeChat blogs, and AAPI academics with whom we generate and disseminate our content. Equipped with diverse lived experiences and deep compassion for our community, Xīn Shēng | 心声 Project is able to approach our audiences’ needs and communication styles more effectively — and more urgently — than anyone else could.

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.