EDC Summit: Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival

This year, the Eastern District Council’s NY/SC summit was hosted as a part of the  Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival programming and focused on issues surrounding coalition building between different immigrant communities in the United States. We hosted a panel discussion featuring several community members from Tsuru For Solidarity (a Japanese-American grassroots organization protesting migrant detention), the Council for American-Islamic Relations – Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, and Shut Down Berks Coalition. We held a conversation about the ways in which we as immigrant communities can support each other and collaborate on the common goal of achieving equal rights and justice for marginalized communities in the United States that face issues such as mass detention, incarceration, and the perils of race based discrimination and violence. We followed up our panel with a lunchtime discussion with Tsuru For Solidarity leaders Mike Ishii and Lauren Sumida about intergenerational trauma and activism in youth populations.