Closing Out 2024: Reflections from Our Staff

December 2024

The year is ending with lots of feelings — excitement for the winter break, disappointment about the election results, grief for the continuing genocide in Gaza, hope for a better world. Our staff gathered at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland for our final retreat of 2024. We took time to appreciate each other, flex our creativity gently, and fill our bellies with delicious food.

We end this year with appreciation for our network organizations doing the work with our communities on the ground throughout California. We also extend our gratitude to the organizers working across the country and around the world who fight for justice for all.

We asked AAPI FORCE-EF staff members to share what’s on their minds as we near the end of 2024 and the start of 2025. Here’s what some had to say:

As 2024 comes to a close, what are you grounding yourself in? Are there any rituals or practices you do at the end of the year to reflect and remind yourself of why you do the work?

Shine Cho

My best friend and I’ve gone on a weekend trip at the start of every year for the past few years. We call it our Annual Woo Woo Trip (trademark pending) — we carve out a weekend somewhere new and relaxing, spend time journaling, walking, and eating great food. At the end of the year, we reflect on our journal entries from that weekend: our challenges, successes, and surprises since then. And, of course, we plan our next Woo Woo Trip. In 2025, we’ll be going to Ojai!

My family and friends are a constant source of inspiration and urgency for me. Being first gen and from a working class background, I consider it an enormous privilege to spend at least 40 hours in a week to work on political projects and struggles to build up power with our immigrant and working class families in the state. As we face the many fears of next year (numerous and valid), my sense of urgency only feels stronger. I’m grateful to be with my colleagues of AAPI FORCE as we forge forward together.

Kelly Wong

While the current political conditions are a threat to our immigrant and working class people, I remind myself that communities of color have fought for ourselves for several generations, and that we will continue to fight. As 2024 comes to a close, I am grounding myself in the power my community still holds to organize and care for each other.

Preparing for 2025, I want to broaden and deepen my understanding of global power and solidarity. I want to keep up with the news in Gaza and the West Bank and learn how people all over the world are fighting against fascism.

Timmy Lu

The end of the year is time for me to reconnect with family and friends IRL. Through the course of the year I connect with them on social media or over text, and it’s great again to see faces, hear laughter, and share space with loved ones. Taking the time to be reminded that these are the people I’m working towards a better world for is really important for doing what’s needed in the coming year.

For the coming year, I’m looking to tap into imagination and cooperation, both elements I expect I’ll need a lot of. I’ve long been a role-playing game fan, and I’ve been listening to Worlds Beyond Number, a Dungeons and Dragons actual play podcast. I love that the creators infuse play with politics, and that their show is diverse with women, queer folk, and POC well-represented, like the tables I play in. Most importantly, I’m channeling the players ability to solve problems, tend to emotional needs in trying times, and have a good laugh at the same time.

Ashley Lin

Every day, I see news from Palestine on my social media. Every day, Palestinians remain on their homelands and endure an ongoing genocide funded by U.S. tax dollars. Our government’s inability to value Palestinian life reminds me that our government doesn’t govern for the people.

What we’re reading/listening to:

For hope:

• Freedom Is A Constant Struggle by Angela Davis
• Unbought and Unbossed by Shirley Chisholm
• We Do This ’Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba
• We Gathered Heat, Terisa Siagatonu
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

To learn:

• Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
• The Fascism Barometer, a podcast hosted by movement meteorologist Ejeris Dixon who brings on friends to discuss how fascism affects our safety, rights, and communities.
• Blowback
• Revolutionary Left Radio

Who we’re looking to for inspiration:

• Osita Nwanevu
• Jamelle Bouie
• Dave Weigel
• Kim Kelly
• Rock legend Patti Smith’s song “People Have the Power”: “the people have the power/the power to dream, to rule/to wrestle the world from fools.”
• Palestinians in Palestine. They are the steadfast leaders of the movement for generations to come.

Final thought from Timmy, our Executive Director:

Only corporations and billionaires think they can change the world by themselves with only the vast resources they have at hand. All of the rest of us need to be building organizations and relationships to participate in and change this democracy we live in. In a year with big defeats (but some key wins too!), our most important tools to fight back are the ones we build through community.