Happy Lunar New Year!
All of us at CAPA21 would like to wish you and your loved ones all the best of health, happiness, and the wealth of all good things in the Year of the Wood Dragon!
Thank you for being part of CAPA21’s efforts to ensure that AANHPI voices and their allies have a place at the table. Your financial and moral sustenance helps to lead our nation towards a more equitable, fairer, and brighter future by supporting the progressive candidates and organizers we believe can do the work.
It has been exciting to step into the big shoes of our immediate past Chair, Dale Minami. Sitting alongside him and our other amazing and trailblazing leaders, Maeley Tom, and Ginger Lew during this transition, I have been inspired by their authenticity, their passion, how they serve, and how they speak truth to power. I will honor their legacy – and your legacy as CAPA21’s supporters.
I have not yet had the chance to meet many of you, but I am proudly a ‘woke’ person, left-winger, pinko, snowflake, and proud member of the Democratic Party – and all the ‘othering’ terms we have heard disparaging what it means to be compassionate, liberal, and truth advocate for all.
Our nation’s state of democracy feels like it’s going backwards, but we’re here to push forward, seeking and supporting persons and organizations that can speak candidly and who learn how to take in ideas that are different from their own, and to treat those who have opposing views with civility and respect.
I know that the power of storytelling can affect, move, and change people for the better. Stories can make a person, a family, a community, feel seen, heard, and included. Good storytelling can create good discussions which can lead to good policies and legislation. I believe that’s what good politics and good government should do.
In looking over the incredible list of supporters of CAPA21, I have had the privilege of being in the same rooms with many of you, and I am often astounded that I get to stand or sit in your company and share thoughts and stories. I very much look forward to opportunities in learning from your experiences and collective wisdom, of what it means to be a part of CAPA21, and about how to move our country forward.
I truly appreciate the depths of your stories, of taking the responsibility of listening to and looking out for others, of demonstrating and acting upon what is good for us all, and of standing up for what we believe in.
I have also had the privilege of being in new rooms with new folks of newer generations, who have been energizing and enlivening the political landscape with new ideas. Threading the legacy of CAPA21 through to the younger generations is a major investment into our AANHPI communities that will continue to put pressure on our political leaders to know, remember, care, and advocate about issues that affect us.
How exciting it will be for CAPA21 to build upon its foundation as one of the first AAPI PACs, while growing its aspirations by persevering to hope, change, and to build back better.
I am hopeful that CAPA21 will continue to earn your support and participation as we look together to the year ahead of us. There are many steps on this journey, and I am humbled and proud to be a part of this forward march with you all.
Learn more about our plans for 2024.
~ Tamlyn
CAPA21 