OWA AF + OPAWL
Ohio Women’s Alliance Action Fund is dedicated to building lasting infrastructure to support dynamic women of color-led groups across the state. This year we did just that through our fiscal sponsorship of Ohio Progressive Asian Women’s Leadership’s very first electoral program!
Ohio Progressive Asian Women’s Leadership (OPAWL) represents progressive Asian American and Pacific Islander women and nonbinary people in Ohio. Their programming includes writing circles, virtual dinners, and panels addressing the lived experiences of AAPI folks in the midwest and this year expanded into the electoral process! OPAWL hosted phone and text banks, hiring nine canvassers and reaching over 130,000 AAPI voters in Ohio!
OPAWL holds a unique position in the progressive landscape, working with many New Americans and bilingual folks every single day. This strength allowed them to reach folks in their native languages who may otherwise have been ignored by other campaigns. They were also able to offer opportunities for people who are not able to participate in traditional methods of the electoral process because of their immigration status, to feel heard and seen by being a part of a larger movement, mobilizing voters who represent them.
The Asian American Pacific Islanders community is the fastest-growing group in the United States and is primed to be a major voting bloc. Prior to the election, news articles could be found circulating mentioning the AAPI community to be possibly the difference-maker in key swing states. For OPAWL organizer, Jona Hilario (she/her) reaching out to AAPI voters feels incredibly important because these are folks often ignored by other electoral campaigns. Many of the voters she talked to were thrilled to have someone reaching out to them about voting and needed answers to their questions. The voting process was even more confusing than usual this year, due to the ongoing pandemic, and especially for many New Americans, voting information can be hard to find.
Jona cannot vote due to her immigration status, so she was happy to still be able to be a part of the change in this unique way. Jona explains, “This work was also impactful because often AAPI families all live together intergenerationally so when you are reaching one voter, you’re actually reaching several others at the same time.”
Jona says that the voter outreach was a pivotal first step for OPAWL and really highlighted just how far we need to go to make sure the AAPI community in Ohio truly has access to make their voices heard. OPAWL hired canvassers fluent in Nepali and Hindi and they noted sometimes voters were so happy to hear a familiar language and wanted to talk about anything and everything! “Translation is a huge issue for these voters, many polling places in Ohio don’t have translators and if counties do have translated ballots they’re usually only in Spanish.”
The federal government requires jurisdictions (cities, counties, states, etc.) to provide multilingual ballots when a single-language group in that location numbers more than 10,000 individuals or is more than 5% of the voting-age population. The number of places required to provide multilingual ballots and other election materials is determined by the Census Bureau every five years. This is another in the slew of reasons was OPAWL heavily focused on ensuring a full count during the 2020 Census. “We hope one day the AAPI community will have more visibility in Ohio and we’re committed to getting us there.”
Board President Tessa Xuan (she/her/they) shared, “At the beginning of the year, we never imagined that our grassroots volunteer-run organization would end up making over 130,000 contact attempts to AAPI voters in Ohio during this election season, or that our organizers would ever be paid for the time and energy we give to OPAWL. We began building this community after the 2016 election to help us survive as AAPI women and non-binary people living in Ohio, and it's so important that OPAWL still exists in 2020, a year when the pandemic and a resurgence of anti-Asian racism and violence have threatened our communities. We have learned so much from running our first voter outreach program, and we are excited to continue building collective power and mobilizing AAPIs to fight for social justice in 2021 and beyond.”
Voting may be an individual act, but it is fueled by our communities coming together and OPAWL understand this better than most. At Ohio Women’s Alliance Action Fund, we are honored to be a part of their story and continue to build together beyond this election cycle.