Cathy Dang: Organizing with Discipline, Rigor, Love and Revolutionary Heart
Interview and Editing by May Chen. Posted Aug. 21, 2018.
Cathy Dang grew up in her parents’ nail salons. They were refugees from Vietnam, arriving in 1979. Cathy was born in Ridgewood, Queens, NYC. The family eventually moved to LA, where she worked continually in the family’s nail salon.
College is where her political consciousness began, at Loyola Marymount in a class called “Women of Color in the U.S.” with Prof. Dionne Bennett. She became deeply aware of the exploitation of blacks, Latinx, and Asians, and workers. As a college student, she volunteered with the hotel union (Local 11 UNITE HERE), and she supported the campaigns of car wash and domestic workers.
Cathy Dang. Photo: Enbion Micah Aan.
Moving to NYC, Cathy Dang has worked for five years as the Executive Director of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities (caaav.org). CAAAV was formed as a Coalition Against Anti-Asian Violence in 1986 and evolved into a grassroots community organization engaged in direct organizing. CAAAV organized taxi drivers and car wash workers – who now have their own strong groups. CAAAV has devoted recent decades to organizing tenants and working on housing issues.
In one of many eloquent posts on Facebook, Cathy recounts the refugee story of her family.
6/20/18 Facebook
VT 668, the name of the boat where my parents just closed their eyes, took all their prayers to Buddha and Kuan Ying and prayed that they will make it to a camp, ANY refugee camp. VT 668 holds a million stories for us.
It is the story of how my dad’s parents begged him not to leave Vietnam, but he did because he wanted to see what other opportunities there could be for him, my mom, my older siblings and his future children (me). And my grandfather, whom I’ve never met, was so sad about him leaving, that he died 2-3 years after my dad left from sadness… and then my grandmother whom I also have never met died after he did.
VT 668 is the story of how my mom and my uncle were captured in their first attempt to leave the country and went to jail for 3 months. They slept in small rooms and didn’t get to eat much. And my uncle was an avid smoker, and the minute he was released, the first thing he did was smoke a cigarette lol. When the Communist Party decided to let everyone leave who wanted to leave, my mom and uncle were released in the morning and they attempted to leave again that NIGHT. If that’s not bravery, I don’t know what is.
VT668 is the story of when my older siblings tried to make their first attempt with my dad on another boat, and when they got on, there was a gaping hole and water flooded in. So they rushed off to get back to land, and when they got back to land, and turned around, they watched the boat sink…the boat they could have all died on.
Cathy Dang at her parents’ nail salon. Photo courtesy of Cathy Dang.
VT668 is the story of how my parents learned to live life in the U.S. with such boldness and taking sometimes too many risks. I am for risks, but the risks they took put my family sometimes into harm’s way. But when you lose everything, your family, your belongings, your history… you think you can gain even more so their mentality was…why the fuck not?
VT668 is the story of Long Nails, one of the first nail salons in NYC that started acrylic tips and double tips and where my parents became a trend setter starting an industry in NYC. It is where we built family with the customers and 60 workers who are still in touch with us with today.
VT668 is the story of how my parents had to send money back to Vietnam to my aunts, uncles and cousins buy homes and gain stability.
VT668 is the story of how kids of refugees hung out with each other, had our own culture and our parents’ “why the fuck not” mentality transferred to us which got us into a lot of trouble. How Viet youth were profiled as gang members and how some of us got out of it and some of us didn’t.
VT668 is the story of how my sister met my brother-in-law and gave life to my precious niece and nephew. It is the story of how I met the love of my life, Ajahne, and our future and our children.
VT668 is the story of my complex understanding of my history – a family who has been in Vietnam for almost 100 years after migrating from famine in Guangzhou, China to now holding stories of transnational families.
VT668 is the story of how I am still trying to unravel my politics as a socialist and how I see that the Communist Party was trying to win Independence after centuries of colonialism and how the country is now working towards socialism. I asked, why did my family leave? Why did we not stay to help re-build the country? And when I went to the War Remnants’ Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, I was reminded of the multitude of atrocities the U.S. committed on Southeast Asia. And how afraid my parents must have been hearing bombs every night for decades and of the uncertainty of the most basic thing as food. During war, most people don’t talk about the extreme famine the country faced because they couldn’t import or grow food in the fields that were being bombed and sprayed agent orange.
VT668 is the story of how my parents returned home to Saigon in 2010, after not achieving their “American Dream,” losing everything they ever worked for here because capitalism will always have a one up on you. But they are finding peace with their return home even though they don’t get to see their kids and grandkids as often as they would like.
And on world refugee day, I am reminded of what my dad said. He said that we were lucky that we got sponsored and that there are so many countries today where this administration is rejecting their entry, deporting people and causing disasters and not letting people come to the U.S. But really, it’s because people fought for us and fought for an end to the war and now we have a responsibility to fight for others.
For all the folks who’ve crossed deserts on foot, crossed borders, taken a raft or a boat, overstayed their visas, work in the shadows to support their families, you are the bravest people. And for all the thousands of people who did not make it…. you all are a reminder of our continued fight towards humanity.
Thoughts about ACTIVISM:
Activism means you are activated, and you put your words into action. It’s not just re-posting something on social media. It means you’re showing up at trainings, know your rights trainings, rallies, signing petitions – not just being a bystander. That what activism means – you have to be actively intervening in situations. It’s different from what we do in organizing – in which we believe we have to move people in our communities towards a common understanding and common goal with demands, where we change the structure of our system of white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, and the classism within our communities or xenophobia. So there’s activism and there’s organizing which is what we do and we believe both are important and both play a role in our work.
Cathy Dang at a rally in New York.
CAAAV always had a left anti-capitalist framing. One of the main challenges I have confronted is the tension between 2nd generation Asian American politicized activists and 1st generation immigrants. The 2nd generation politicized activists will have left anti-capitalist or anti-racist views, but we have to be moving an older immigrant membership base on those views. One of the main lessons of recent years is the importance of moving the base who can be and are pulled by apathy or right-wing forces.
5/21/18 Facebook
I get that with each generation, we want to do better than the last. But sometimes it’s not such a bad thing to get dirty and do the grimy work of our working-class parents – dirt and dust won’t kill you as long as you’re not exposed to too much of it over time. I don’t know, but maybe being exposed to and touching acetone and chemicals and dust from acrylic from age 2 to 20, doing pedicures, and cleaning nasty stuff in restaurants as a young adult probably gives me a different understanding of what we should be okay with. All I know is that we can’t claim to get down and think we are too good for the laborious hard work our ancestors and parents have had to deal with.
Thoughts about WOMEN LEADERS:
7/19/18 Facebook
Our movements complain about how we lack working-class women of color and TGNC (trans/gender non-conforming) folks in leadership positions. And yet when working-class women of color and TGNC folks take on these roles, it becomes the impossible. We don’t want to replicate the same hyper masculine or toxic masculine ways of leading that is hurtful to our practice, and we are expected to be understanding, warm caretakers, and loving all the while expected to build winning campaigns and strong politics. But when we hold people or coalitions accountable or do what it takes to build strong politics and winning vehicles, we are labeled a bitch, hard ass, strict, we don’t listen, we don’t affirm (all stuff I have heard from other women leaders). Working-class women of color and TGNC folks are unfairly projected by folks in our movements to be mothers or caretakers, but when we want to hold a line and mark something as mediocrity, sloppy, unacceptable and detrimental to our collective (think extended movement fam), we are stopped in our tracks. So much of this is indoctrination of hegemony and patriarchy adopted by people of all genders. I think people aren’t used to it so they don’t know how to handle love and rigor at the same time and act out.
The Climate Justice March 2014.
It’s so easy to critique when you haven’t had to build something really substantive or transform toxic cultures in our movement spaces. I often ask myself now, how have I been hurtful/unhelpful to this work that prevents us from building the Left, and especially in working-class Asian spaces? How have I not been supportive of those in leadership? I’m most definitely not bought into charismatic leadership and do not think an individual will save us, but I do believe that we need to follow and lead and lead and follow, setting aside any kind of expectations of my own individual desires cuz. it. ain’t. about. me. It’s about us. And if we want to keep asking for working-class TGNC folks and women of color to lead, then our movements need to honor and respect their leadership, especially when they truly try to do something completely different from the hyper masculine normative ways of leading.
Lead with discipline. Lead fiercely. Rigor with love. Love with rigor. All can be true.
Thoughts about SOLIDARITY:
There’s solidarity within our own communities that I think we are at a different juncture in our organizing. We’re part of a national alliance called Grassroots Asians Rising, consisting of several groups: DRUM and CAAAV in New York, PrYSM in Rhode Island, CPA in SF, Asian Pacific Environmental Network of Oakland and Richmond, and AYPAL in Oakland. Creating this formation in the last decade, there were rifts within APA communities, over who’s in the community and who’s not in this community; and who’s being represented and who’s not being represented… I think first and foremost, there’s a need for solidarity within our own communities. Our comrade from Freedom Inc in Wisconsin would say this: how do we stand up Asians for Asians…Southeast Asians and South Asians especially in this moment, and Pacific Islanders around the detention to deportation pipeline, Muslim surveillance, the school to prison pipeline for Pacific Islanders, and we’re at that moment where we’re reaching more clarity around what solidarity looks like and we need to put that into practice.
And there’s also solidarity outside of our communities, where we have to see our struggles and liberation inter-connected. How does a grandma in Chinatown connect to a black homeless man? And the grandma who’s being displaced by her landlord could end up homeless, and that means we have to stand with black folks who experience homelessness in New York at much higher levels. And we have to see the connections between the different systems. And we stand in solidarity with different communities and change the system with each other, and solidarity is necessary for us to win in our own communities.
7/22/18 with immigration rally photo-Facebook
Photo from the march against family separation and detentions from a few weeks ago. Donald Anthonyson of Families for Freedom leading the way. Our contingent of 150+ people called for more than an end to family separation in the sea of 30,000 people. We call for the end of family imprisonment of Mexican and Central American immigrant families and made connections to the history of U.S. colonialism’s separation of indigenous people, mass incarceration of Black folks breaking apart families, and wars that separate families.
Rally for Immigrant Rights with Donald Anthonyson in the center of the photo. Photo courtesy of CAAAV.