USSF day 4 & 5: Keri's stories

THURSDAY

I took a red-eye & arrived 4am Friday into Atlanta. With the airport train broken, I walked quarter of a mile to the baggage claim— thanks to the spirit of the African art along the way to keep me going. I got to the hotel & woke up Mimi at 5am, just in time for a 3 hour nap.

Our breakfast meeting planned our activities for the day then headed out to the EJ Tent for the Toxic Wastes & Race at 20 Press Conference. One of our main purposes was to support Tina as our APEN speaker. The speech was great. The weather was hot & the huge audience was sweating, including a lot of youth. I was surprised to see them: powerful, speaks their mind & brings justice for their community.

I was excited to be at my first Social Forum. So I attended workshops: Queers in Hip Hop (because I wanted to tag along with Tina); Grassroots Leadership Development & Movement Building. It was good to see others getting together to show what they’re doing in their different communities.

The API Gathering was a great experience for the evening. I got to meet other US API’s of mixed generations getting involved in their communities, fighting for workers rights, environmental justice & immigrant rights. And even though APEN sponsored an ice cream social party until 1 am, I didn’t get to it because I crashed at 10:30pm.

FRIDAY

This was a big day for me because I had to speak for an Organizing in Asian Communities workshop with Mimi. I was nervous! The room was packed, especially with youth. The panel included issues around immigrant deportations, fighting for better working conditions and affordable housing (by APEN, of course). I was nervous & I even told the audience that. From there, they were so supportive (especially Tina & Hai Binh) that my nervousness disappeared. After the workshop was over, people were coming up to me saying that it was good to see a Laotian speak up because they often only hear other major Asian speakers, so this was rare & special. That made me feel great because I did something right for the community.

Today was better than yesterday. I’m more relaxed than yesterday’s jetlag. I got to walk downtown Atlanta—which is beautiful. There are tall buildings & international restaurants with good food.

We went to EJ Tent to watch Mari Rose speak for APEN. It was hot & sticky under the tent because we stayed there for 3 hours. Luckily, we had our APEN fans (souvenirs we made for the USSF) to keep us cool, as well as massage sessions that was offered in the tent that Sandy & Hai Binh took advantage of. As for the panel, we heard many stories of environmental justice struggles in different communities across the US. I listened a lot to what Tom Goldtooth from IEN (Indigenous Environmental Network) had to say about Indian lands being dumped on with toxics. Also locally, there were African American women who talked about their poisoned river near Savannah.

With the heat & our tiredness, we went back to the hotel & got into the pool to relax. For dinner, we went to eat Southern food. The food was wonderful. I ordered grilled catfish, with sides that included sweet potato soufflé, fresh fruit, creamed corn, buttered cabbage, fried okra & fried green tomatoes.

For the last activity of the day, we took the train to the Grassroots Global Justice party for international delegates to the USSF. I met a woman from Kenya and other communities from the US who were working to improve their communities.