Asian American Justice + Innovation Lab

Asian American Justice + Innovation Lab Incubating justice, practicing liberation, and cultivating collective agility for change.

The Asian American Justice + Innovation Lab is a community racial justice incubator. At its core, AAJIL (pronounced “agile”) offers general racial justice education for all that employs a decolonial framework and intentionally integrates Asian American histories and experiences. Radiating from that core work is the practice of mutual care through community-building, opportunities for collaboration

and innovation, and the long-range potential for participants to impact their spheres of influence with values of justice, liberation, and collective agility.

📣 Talking Our Way To Justice 📣Join us for our upcoming People's School for Justice session on Saturday, June 27th at 9AM...
06/10/2026

📣 Talking Our Way To Justice 📣

Join us for our upcoming People's School for Justice session on Saturday, June 27th at 9AM PST / 12PM EST! Register at tinyurl.com/aajilevents

⚖️ In this session, conversation will revolve around the central role that dialogue has in advancing justice! Together, we will identify the necessary components of justice-oriented dialogue and work through a model for dialogue that is tailored toward justice work. ⚖️

Note: This session is longer because it is formatted as a workshop in which we will be practicing skills and discussing the topic together. It is suggested to stay for the entirety of the session.

*description in comments*

🌱 Meet the Instructor 🌱

Ricky Blissett is the Associate Director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Both within and outside of their role at UMBC, their research primarily focuses on attitudes and ideologies in the politics of educational equity and justice, as well as the spaces in which public ideologies translate into policy action. Their expertise includes educational politics and governance, ideological politics of race- and gender-conscious policy, and program evaluation and research methodology. Further, they are a dialogue facilitator with training in conflict mediation and multiple models of dialogue, and they build and train others in forms of dialogue that enable civic participation and justice-focused analysis. Ricky holds a Ph.D. in Leadership and Policy Studies (with a minor in Quantitative Methods) from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (with a minor in Computer Science) from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

☀️ Join us on June 24th and June 25th from 5PM - 6:30 PM PST / 8PM - 9:30PM EST for a newly revamped version of AAJIL’s ...
06/10/2026

☀️ Join us on June 24th and June 25th from 5PM - 6:30 PM PST / 8PM - 9:30PM EST for a newly revamped version of AAJIL’s Fundamentals, the first leg of our Core Community Racial Justice Trainings, facilitated by AAJIL Core Team member; Angela Kim! ☀️

Register at the link in bio or at tinyurl.com/aajilevents; these sessions are completely virtual!

🌱 These sessions will revolve around the questions “What are the personal, ancestral, and systemic stories that form our Asian American identities? How can we move from identity towards the work of collective liberation?” 🌱

✨SESSION 1 - THE STORIES THAT SHAPE US✨

Participants will be invited to connect their own personal and family stories of immigration to larger systemic and national movements that form the Asian American identity.

✨SESSION 2 - FROM IDENTITY TO COLLECTIVE LIBERATION✨

Participants will be invited to explore the gifts and limitations of the Asian American identity as a label and to explore how we might move towards collective liberation across race, class, nationality, gender, etc.
These 2 online sessions comprise the Fundamentals level of AAJIL's Core Community Racial Justice Trainings.

The next level are the 3 Foundations trainings that will be offered in late July.

The third level, Formations, is AAJIL's 8-month community leadership development program dedicated to developing justice-minded leaders who center community, decolonial values, and emergent strategy. Participants must attend all 3 Foundations sessions. The program:
- is built upon emergent strategy, decolonial values, and an ethics of solidarity
- focuses on supporting a small cohort of community lab organizers
- is free + leads to a certificate upon completion
meets online from ~Sep 2026 to ~May 2027

☄️ AAJIL’s Core Community Racial Justice Trainings are back ☄️AAJIL’s Core Trainings are for EVERYONE. We offer them in ...
06/10/2026

☄️ AAJIL’s Core Community Racial Justice Trainings are back ☄️

AAJIL’s Core Trainings are for EVERYONE. We offer them in order to equip you with histories and critical frameworks that can deepen the work of antiracism in your lives and in your communities. These are offered on a donation-basis and are virtual gatherings via Zoom.

🌱 This is a three-level program, with Fundamentals designed for people who care about racial justice but feel like they are just starting out on their journeys. Foundations is for those who are further along but who could use a deeper dive— this level focuses on aspects of systemic racism that ideologies of whiteness strategically invisibilize: the function of Asian racializations and oppressions within a white-dominant societal complex built upon anti-Indigenous and anti-Black infrastructures. 🌱

Fundamentals and Foundations together aim to show why all of us need to know both our own histories as well as the histories of communities who don’t look like us. They represent our beliefs and values as an organization and are the foundation for organizing emergent community-led labs for mutual care, community-building, collaboration, and innovation.

Formations is the third level of our core trainings program that focuses on a small cohort of community lab organizers who emerge from the Foundations level. Formations offers them a unique community leadership development program that is built upon emergent strategy, decolonial values, and an ethics of solidarity.

❣️ The first level (Fundamentals) will be offered on Wednesday, June 24th and Thursday, June 25th. Register at the link in bio or at tinyurl.com/aajilevents! ❣️

The second level (Foundations) will be offered in late July and the third (Formations) will begin in autumn!

🐙 From the Belly of the Beast: for sensitive souls in the public sector 🐙Learn more and join this upcoming Community Lab...
05/13/2026

🐙 From the Belly of the Beast: for sensitive souls in the public sector 🐙

Learn more and join this upcoming Community Lab at tinyurl.com/fromthebelly! Meetings will be on Mondays in June from 6PM - 7PM PST/ 9PM - 10PM EST! Applications are due by Wednesday, May 20th

🌊 What to Expect: a 5-week online course for people currently working in the public sector who may be feeling some dissonance between their places of work and their hearts. 🌊

You may be somewhere along the lines of quiet indignation trying to get your coworkers or boss to care more or explore alternative possibilities, uneasy questioning of the effective or purpose of your projects, mild resignation that this is a job after all and at least you get health insurance, or seething rage at the state of the world and your place in it.

🪸We will explore the roots that give rise to how the dominant culture approaches social problems and the engines that continue to drive this single-story of progress. Participants will be invited and guided through exploring their own lineages and stories and through engaging with the challenging work of facing how we perpetuate, rather than improve, our broken systems. 🪸

❤️‍🔥 Facilitated by the amazing and ever-impactful Angela Kim! ❤️‍🔥

📣 Talking Our Way To Justice 📣Join us for our upcoming People's School for Justice session on Saturday, May 16th at 9AM ...
05/07/2026

📣 Talking Our Way To Justice 📣

Join us for our upcoming People's School for Justice session on Saturday, May 16th at 9AM PST / 12PM EST! Register at the link in bio or at tinyurl.com/2jsxf45d

⚖️ In this session, conversation will revolve around the central role that dialogue has in advancing justice! Together, we will identify the necessary components of justice-oriented dialogue and work through a model for dialogue that is tailored toward justice work. ⚖️

Note: This session is longer because it is formatted as a workshop in which we will be practicing skills and discussing the topic together. It is suggested to stay for the entirety of the session.

*description in comments*

🌱 Meet the Instructor 🌱

Ricky Blissett is the Associate Director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Both within and outside of their role at UMBC, their research primarily focuses on attitudes and ideologies in the politics of educational equity and justice, as well as the spaces in which public ideologies translate into policy action. Their expertise includes educational politics and governance, ideological politics of race- and gender-conscious policy, and program evaluation and research methodology. Further, they are a dialogue facilitator with training in conflict mediation and multiple models of dialogue, and they build and train others in forms of dialogue that enable civic participation and justice-focused analysis. Ricky holds a Ph.D. in Leadership and Policy Studies (with a minor in Quantitative Methods) from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (with a minor in Computer Science) from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

☀️Throwing it back to Mixed Asian Multitudes & Solidarities; AAJIL's in-person event back in December! This was definite...
05/06/2026

☀️Throwing it back to Mixed Asian Multitudes & Solidarities; AAJIL's in-person event back in December! This was definitely one for the books, hearts, and minds!☀️

Facilitated by Co-Director and Mixed Asian Multitudes Community Lab Facilitator Dante Comet (she/her) alongside Founder Dr. Sandra So Hee Chi Kim and fellow Co-Director Hân Nguyen, programming included a teach-in with Miya Schaffer, a talk-back with , Victoria, and 's , as well as interactive music exploration with . Also a shoutout to for the ICE watch kit materials and for help with the beautiful posters!

🌱 We're so grateful for these moments of connection, vulnerability, sharing of knowledge, and community building. The Mixed Asian Multitudes community lab is still active and welcomes new members at any time (all are welcome!) More info and sign-up at aajil.org/labs! 🌱

❣️We're so looking forward to seeing you all at the next in-person AAJIL event! Stay up to date on all our happenings at the link in bio or at aajil.org❣️

📚 Weekend Language School: Everything from Sweet Memories to Sweet Trauma 📚 Join us for another upcoming People’s School...
04/27/2026

📚 Weekend Language School: Everything from Sweet Memories to Sweet Trauma 📚

Join us for another upcoming People’s School for Justice session on Thursday, May 7th at 5PM PST / 8PM EST! Register at the link in bio or at tinyurl.com/5x4achp3

☀️ In this session, Alan Nakagawa will attempt to answer the question; “ Why did I hate going to Saturday Japanese Language School so much?” He will connect the dots between pop culture, ethnic identity and the road to decolonization. We will then encourage participants to share their weekend language school stories in hopes to come to terms with childhood trauma or share what were positive experiences. ☀️

🌱About the Instructor 🌱

🎧 Alan Nakagawa is an interdisciplinary artist with archiving tendencies, primarily working with sound, often incorporating various media and working with communities and their histories. He has created a series of Invisible Architecture experiences that are mash ups of the recorded acoustics of historical sites, giving new context to historic places through a contemporary lens of sound. His first book, “A.I.R.Head: Anatomy of an Artist in Residence” was published in January 2023 by Writ-Large Press. It maps his artistic trajectory that led to his nine Artist-in-residencies in six years. www.alannakagawa.com 🎧

🌳 Greenlining Our Communities 🌳Join us for our upcoming People’s School for Justice session on Thursday, April 30th at 6...
04/21/2026

🌳 Greenlining Our Communities 🌳

Join us for our upcoming People’s School for Justice session on Thursday, April 30th at 6PM PST / 9PM EST! Register at tinyurl.com/mrzthjjc

❣️ This session will explore different case studies that highlight some of those community efforts and invite participants to reflect on ways they can generate ecosystems of interdependence and collective power. ❣️

How would you create a more just and sustainable community? In the face of historic inequity and systemic barriers, how have communities resourced themselves through collective efforts and mutual reliance? Would you create a community garden as a local food source for the neighborhood? Would you transform a parking lot into a mobility hub that provides multi-modal transit? Would you open a community health clinic that’s accessible and open to diverse healing practices?

🌼 There are many factors that contribute to the growing inequities in community development, health impacts, environmental burdens, and access to green space, especially in communities of color. Discriminatory housing practices concentrate communities of color by industrial zones, highways, and pollution sources. Systemic barriers to political influence also prevent the equitable investment of resources into our communities. 🌼

In the face of historic inequity and systemic barriers, how have communities resourced themselves through collective efforts and mutual reliance? Let's learn about it collectively!

🌱 About the Instructor 🌱

🌸 Jean Park (she/her) is a Program Manager for API Forward Movement’s Water is Life project, currently working to develop community-based infrastructure projects in the San Gabriel Valley. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Jean advocates for equity driven policies and is inspired by local community efforts and projects aimed to create more self-reliant communities. 🌸

🌿 Welcoming a second season of AAJIL’s in-person Community Lab → Embodied Emergence with ! 🌿When: Participants will meet...
02/17/2026

🌿 Welcoming a second season of AAJIL’s in-person Community Lab → Embodied Emergence with ! 🌿

When: Participants will meet on Saturdays during the month of March from 11AM - 3PM PST IN-PERSON (LA, CA)

Learn more/sign up at the link in bio or at aajil.org/labs!

🌼 "The wild within and the wild without are kin, the one enlivening the other in a beautiful tango.” -Francis Weller 🌼

Join us for a series of community experiments in stepping into our indigeneity! We will gather in the forest and build (and break apart) stories with each other and with the land through different invitations rooted in embodiment, emergence, connection with the land, grief circles, and group wisdom. Some questions we’ll explore..

🌱 How can we increase our capacities to sit with complexity within ourselves, in others, and in the world at large?
🌱 What do we need collectively in this moment to meet the world as it is, with all its violence and beauty?
🌱 What would it look like to receive the faze of nature? To hear flowers look back at us and whisper to themselves how beautiful we are?
🌱 What, if anything, can numb us?

☀️ Meet the Facilitator ☀️
Angela is a visionary organizer and Kingian nonviolence trainer working towards a world where we have increased capacities to sit with our own and each other’s complexities. Angela stewards community containers where participants can share grief, practice conflict skills, and be co-opted into emergence inspired by the erotic, the intuitive, the divine, the other-than-human. Angela has facilitated workshops for and collaborated with Loving Practice, Asian American Justice Innovation Lab, Visionary Organizing Lab, Friends of the Urban Forest, and the Sacred Roots Collective.

Please email any questions to [email protected]!

🌿 Asian Americans & Nature 🌿Join us on Tuesday, February 3rd at 5PM PST / 8PM EST for our next People’s School for Justi...
01/20/2026

🌿 Asian Americans & Nature 🌿

Join us on Tuesday, February 3rd at 5PM PST / 8PM EST for our next People’s School for Justice session! Register at the link below!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1980937262678?aff=oddtdtcreator

🌻 This will be a collaborative workshop exploring the ways Asian Americans relate to nature through reflections on migration, labor, and place! 🌻

How have Asian Americans historically been positioned in relationship to nature? What new relationships to our environment can we create? How might we question settler urges to own and commodify nature – what new ways of inhabiting the earth are possible?

🎍 Participants will come together to reflect on the landscapes and everyday environments that shape Asian American lives. Thinking expansively about both “Asian America” and “nature,” and centering lived experience, we will explore how migration, family history, and place influence our relationships with our environment. 🎍

❤️ No prior knowledge needed. We will begin with short grounding/framing, historical context, and case studies around Asian American relationships to nature drawn from my scholarly research, and then move through guided prompts and shared conversation. Looking forward to being in community with you. ❤️

🌱 Meet the Facilitator 🌱

K Yin (they/them/ta) is a writer and scholar. They are currently a PhD student in American Studies at Brown. Broadly, they have interests in and teach on Asian American art, race and ethnic studies, and the environment. Their research explores 19th-century visual archives alongside contemporary Asian American art and performance.

They were raised between Sonoma County and Zhejiang. They love leaf-wrapped foods of all kinds (tamales, zongzi, etc.). You can find their culinary creations at congee_baby on Instagram.

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320 West 37th Street
New York, NY
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