The AAPI Movement: Varun Nikore
November 21st, 2024
”We could have, just with the Asian vote alone, won this election.”
We discuss how the Democratic party continues to ignore AAPI voters in schools despite their increasing power at the ballot box and the necessity to build coalitions with them to win elections. Between 2016 and 2020, voter turnout in this community increased by 47%. The near doubling of AAPI voters in Georgia and Arizona effectively made the Biden victory in 2020 possible.
Varun Nikore is Executive Director of the AAPI Victory Alliance, an organization that works to build Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) political power across the country by providing education on progressive issues; creating and advocating for policies that affect our communities; and building alliances with organizations to help AAPIs exert their power and be the margin of victory at the local, state, and national levels.
Your civic action toolkit recommendations from Varun are:
Show up to a school board meeting
Gather insight from engaging in your local community
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Varun Nikore
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producer: Zack Travis
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Varun Nikore Transcript
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Mila Atmos: [00:00:43] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast on a mission to spark civic action. I'm your host, Mila Atmos. I'm a global citizen based in New York City, and I'm deeply curious about the way our society works. So each week, I bring you conversations to cut through the confusion around today's most important civic issues and share clear, actionable ways for us to build a brighter future together. After all, democracy is not a spectator sport. Tomorrow starts right now.
We often think about the electorate in terms of demographics, and we have this idea that demographics are electoral destiny, that in sufficient numbers, minority groups will deliver victories. Now that the presidential election is behind us, we know that's not exactly how it works. And as a naturalized American from an Asian country, I've always been super interested in Asian American identity, which I know was founded as a political category to build power for Asians all over the United States. But having actually not been raised here in the US, the term Asian American doesn't ring fully true to me because the differences between the many ethnicities, languages, cultures, and national origins that make up this larger political category feel very alive and real. Having said that, AAPI voters are clearly increasing their power at the ballot box.
Our guest is Varun Nikore. He's the executive director of AAPI Victory Alliance. It's an organization that works to build Asian American and Pacific Islander political power across the country, help them exert that power and be the margin of victory at the local, state and national levels. Welcome, Varun. Thank you for joining us.
Varun Nikore: [00:02:44] Thanks so much for having me today.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:48] So I'm really interested in learning more about how you're building power. But I think in the wake of the election, we need to get into the discussion about that election at the very top today because, of course, Vice President Kamala Harris is half Asian, and she lost, in my personal opinion, in large part due to sexism and racism. What's your take on how these two factors contributed to her loss?
Varun Nikore: [00:03:15] We actually saw a little bit of racism and sexism in some of the polling the last few months before the election, certainly after she was given the green light at the top of the ticket after Joe Biden had stepped down. We were watching very closely the gender gap, right. The difference between support levels, between, you know, males and females and how they were indicating their level of support for the Vice President. And so we're not sure exactly if closer to Election Day, that gap might have narrowed a bit. We believe it did at least a touch. And so part of the circular firing squad on the left, if you will, is this navel gazing that we do when we lose. And unfortunately, the data won't be complete until probably around April or May or so, but the exit polling did show a gender gap that was closing towards the end. But what particularly concerned me actually, in the gender gap, was we saw off the charts support for Vice President Harris amongst South Asian females, and we did not see that in the late summer. It was close to a 15 point gender gap. And so we were wondering, you know, what's what's going on here? Why wasn't there that initial excitement from South Asian males? So it's something I think we're going to have to dig much deeper on as we get into this post-election analysis phase.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:42] Yeah, for sure. Like you said, we don't have the data yet. But, you know, I feel like it isn't only that there's a gender gap, but also, I think a perception among Asians, you know, we have our own prejudices against each other and also we have feelings if you're Asian in America about how Asians are perceived within the US. So, for example, when I told my high school aged son that Andy Kim was running for Senate in New Jersey, he said "no way an Asian American can win in New Jersey." He just dismissed that out of hand. He was like, that's no chance, you know, and I, I also know that I feel like among Asians there's this idea that in a white society, asian Americans, Asians writ large, will not be taken seriously in the halls of power. What do you say to that?
Varun Nikore: [00:05:40] I very much agree, and I think this is a continuing struggle, if you will, to gain recognition not only as a community, but as a vital part in integral part of the electorate. And I hope we dive deeper into this, but I feel very much that in this particular election, we were still very much an afterthought. Money came in extremely late and that had not changed in the last, you know, two presidential campaign cycles, despite the fact that it was the near doubling of the vote in Georgia and Arizona in 2020 that effectively allowed Joe Biden to be president of the United States of America. And if you think about it in historical terms, in political science terms, that sort of increase in engagement in one presidential cycle does not happen. When we look at movements, significant movements in the electorate, if we see a half a percent, a 1% increase in turnout, that is considered statistically significant. And you'll see all the political science journals write about that. What we saw in 2020 was a 47% increase in voting between '16 and '20 amongst the AAPI electorate. And so why this was not one of, I would say, the top five post-election narratives. I still am scratching my head about that. Because what it would have meant...
Mila Atmos: [00:07:18] Well I can tell you. It's the racism. They don't take Asians seriously. I mean, this is, you know, we started there, right? Like, they don't take Asians seriously when I say "they" I mean, American political operatives don't think much about Asian Americans as a real voting bloc, quote unquote, real voting bloc. And so there isn't any money spent there and there isn't any outreach. And then it just kind of withers away again, you know, because it's like, well, we voted and nobody cared.
Varun Nikore: [00:07:48] Mhm. I completely agree. And you know, if you think about after Joe Biden got elected. I'm going to give you three data points as to something that should continue to alarm us, which is one Joe Biden had set up the Building Back Better organization, which was a 501C4, which is sort of a semi nonprofit, but was allowed to do political engagement. And that was the sort of the communications arm, if you will, outside of the White House that was not connected to the DNC in formal ways because it legally could not, but allowed the president's arm essentially to communicate to the American voters. And essentially what it was doing was trying to convince Americans that the economy was turning around. Right. That was its number one goal, because it was the number one area of concern. I saw practically no AAPI engagement whatsoever. I saw it targeted towards other demographics. Certainly the white
population, the upper Midwest states. It was sort of the precursor to communicate, you know, prior to, years before the election. So zero engagement effectively. Then on the campaign side, the closer we got to the election, say about a year ago, earlier this year, in fact, the DNC was once again bragging about, hey, we put out an AAPI ad and it fell flat, at least in my view. Namely because it was an ad about small business. And profiled in this ad were two Vietnamese American small business owners in the state of Arizona. Well, I don't know why they chose small business when certainly it's an important issue, but it is not even a top five issue amongst AAPIs. If they had done the polling and the research, they would have known that. But I might have picked to profile in those ads the Filipino population, because it is the number one AAPI constituency in the state of Arizona, as well as Nevada, of course, but why they chose small business, why they chose to have as their optics to, I would say, misplaced Asians. I mean, Vietnamese population is very important in a lot of states, not as important in the state of Arizona. At least if you're trying to reach the number one AAPI electorate. And then the third data point is that on the what's called the soft side or the independent side, the folks that are the independent groups that don't coordinate are not allowed to legally coordinate with the campaign side, the DNC campaigns themselves. They didn't start engaging the AAPI constituency until September of this year. We are talking about an organization that, when all is said and done, is going to have had raised close to $1.5 billion, and their number one job is to communicate to constituencies why they waited until the last hour to communicate, after effectively most minds were made up, shows to me... I would say once again, the biggest travesty is when you focus on those constituencies that are permeable, that are movable, that you can persuade, you can't persuade them at the 11th hour! You have to start early. And our organization, for example, we're sending out decks where we showed that there are 750,000 persuadable Asian American and Pacific Islander voters in at the time, eight battleground states, a year ago. And we got very little traction. People didn't even consider this a constituency. And we're still analyzing the numbers, of course. But one of the things we have to realize is that we really did not lose this election in the seven battleground states by large numbers, right at the at the end of the day, it was 2 to 3 percentage points that swung towards Donald Trump. And so we could have just with the Asian vote alone won this election. Now, no shade thrown at our allies in the Latino and the Black community. And they might be able to say the same thing. And I think they could if early money had gone to those groups as well. But it did not. And folks had
been complaining for the better part of a year, like, where is this money? And it just didn't arrive at the end of the day.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:15] Well, there can be plenty of shade thrown at the campaign itself. I mean, the fact that you just mentioned they didn't even try to reach out to the AAPI community until September. You know, it's, that's a failure of the campaign and that's not a failure, clearly, of your work. And they didn't talk to you because you already just said that there are 750,000 voters that could have been persuaded in battleground states. But let's talk a little bit about the work that you do actually. You know, I'm Asian American. So are you. And we both know and as I just mentioned, at the top, there's a huge spectrum of backgrounds that make up this category. Beyond the acronym, how do you define AAPI?
Varun Nikore: [00:12:54] I think now we are a movement. Donald Trump caused this movement. He accelerated it mainly by going after our community. When he was president, the first time he was deliberately targeting our voters, targeting our constituency and our our citizens, frankly, by saying that Vietnamese should self-deport that because they came here as refugees. You know, they should just go back, right? Things are better in Vietnam now. They should just go back after having been here now for three generations. And so Stephen Miller, being the main architect, who is essentially now coming back as the deputy chief of staff, basically was he was the chief designer of a lot of these anti-immigrant actions in the first term. And we're going to see that happen on steroids. But essentially he and the administration in the first Trump term caused our community to rise up and start to fight back. And in that process of fighting back, we saw greater recognition ever of the term AAPI. It might have had 10%, 15% recognition in surveys. And after his term, it was closer to 25% recognition. And it was mainly amongst younger people. I think older APIs still don't necessarily totally recognize with that term. But what he did, and I'm hoping happens as a silver lining in a second Trump term is we see even more recognition because while we, granted, are a basket and, if you will, an umbrella of many ethnicities made up to be a so-called one, we have been in many respects over the last eight years or so, been moving in the same direction. We moved back, actually. There was still net Democratic support from Asian Americans in this election, but we did see a backsliding according to the early exit polling. Let's see if that holds true. But we are moving kind of together as this one entity, even though we have to recognize that we make up a population of over 20 nations of
origin who speak hundreds of languages and dialects. And so, that I think will help us going forward, because, you know, those campaign operatives that you were referring to earlier, it's really hard for them to grasp who our electorate is. And, you know, I'll be frank, as someone who's been doing AAPI organizing for over 20 years, it is hard for me to even recognize. I think people don't realize that Iranian Americans are AAPI, that Tajikistani Americans are AAPI. Indonesian Americans are AAPI. Samoans are AAPI, right? I mean, we go from the west to the east and it spans 10,000 miles of geography. And we really need to, I think, do a better job educating Americans. But along the lines, I don't think we can wait. We need to forcefully fight back and continue to tell campaign operatives that they're going to lose election and lose future elections if they don't spend the adequate amount of dollars reaching out to our community and its constituents.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:29] Mhm.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:34] We'll continue with Varun Nikore in a moment. So stay with us. You won't want to miss this episode's civics park. One small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change.
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And now let's return to my conversation with Varun Nikore.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:42] Well, it's good that you just told us the wide swath of voters that is considered AAPI. So I'm Indonesian and Indonesians are very conservative in general, and I think that most Iranians are also conservative, you know, in in terms of culture. Right. So I would say a lot of the Asian electorate is not progressive. And so, you know, this idea that I think a lot of Democratic operatives have is, you know, they say something like, oh, "they are people of color, so they're going to vote for Democrats." And that's terribly reductive. And it really doesn't get you votes, as we've seen. So from your work in these communities. And, you know, just describing the large spectrum of backgrounds, what did you discover is really top of mind for this community? What are the most salient issues that you heard about over and over before Election Day?
Varun Nikore: [00:19:44] Well, I think herein lies a little bit of a disconnect between what the surveys were telling us that were important to the AAPI community and what the campaigns and operations attempted to communicate with the community on. So I'll give you one example. Reproductive rights has shown to be sort of a top five issue amongst the AAPI community, but we displayed the narrative of reproductive rights, I think perhaps in the wrong way, where we said it was a freedom issue, and it very much is to large swaths of the electorate. But to the AAPI community, they view abortion access as health care, and we should have couched it better in those terms. I think that was one lost opportunity. And what was really interesting, and we as an organization, one of our key issues is gun violence. And it has been because that is something that's extremely important primarily to AAPI youth, 18 to 30. But we knew that as that electorate over the last 2 to 3 years became the largest voting bloc in the United States that we needed to transform our organization a little bit into issues that they first and foremost thought were the most important. I view that as another missed opportunity in this election, that the AAPI population should have been communicated to a little bit more on gun violence and what we saw in our own research last year in the state of Virginia was that it was the number one issue amongst Virginians in the 2023 election. And that is somewhat astounding because our pollster Celinda Lake, our partner Everytown for Gun Safety, both told us that they've never seen gun violence as the top issue amongst any constituency ever before. And so what's really interesting about this
specific issue, if you will, is that we were back of the pack on gun violence historically in surveys that not even top ten, let's say. Well, post Uvalde, we saw it really tick up in the 2022 midterms. And then in our survey in the Virginia election last year, in 2023, we believe it was Uvalde. And we believe that because this was a school shooting, and it was right around the time that we saw more AAPIs be engaged in policy and voting and that sort of thing. And so we think the numbers started to really accelerate in terms of support on this issue, because it was a school shooting and because there's been long time historical reverence for education in our communities. And so it was that intersection of a concern about more gun violence on the backs of hate against AAPIs. There was more fear. And we felt collectively, I would say as a community that, wow, if our schools are not safe, we are not safe. That's the last bastion of safety. And if our kids are not safe in schools, then, you know, it's something that essentially accelerated deep concern in this issue. And so those are just two examples that the community could have been better communicated to in the last election, and I think were missed opportunities.
Mila Atmos: [00:23:17] Oh totally agree. I mean, I think in terms of the abortion rights, I have said for a long time, and I'll say it again here, that, you know, the most common abortion is post miscarriage. And most people who have a miscarriage wanted a pregnancy. And the fact that women are bleeding out in parking lots and dying is totally unconscionable. And for the record, in a place like Indonesia, where abortion, of course, is outlawed, you can get an abortion after you have a miscarriage, and that is a totally normal thing to do. Perfectly acceptable. And nobody questions it and bats an eye.
Varun Nikore: [00:23:54] So Mila, could I, could I add something else that I think is often missing from the larger conversation? I would say amongst the wider electorate and certainly amongst AAPIs, which is men care deeply about abortion access.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:07] Yes.
Varun Nikore: [00:24:07] In this country, obviously with slightly different shades of why it's important to them. But I don't know why we don't communicate to all men and AAPI men as a father of a daughter, as a husband of a wife. I mean, I'm not communicated to on this issue. It is deeply important to me because I don't want my daughter to lose rights that we've had in place for over 50 years in this country. I don't want her to have
to suffer any ill harms because of illegality now, of this of this important access to a piece of health care. And so I don't know why we don't do this. And I think we might have lost men, partially because we don't communicate to men. I don't know if we know how to. I don't see any major abortion access organizations communicate to men, and not only on this issue, but on a whole host of issues. We lost boys and men in this election. I'm deeply concerned about young Asian men feeling like they don't have access to have girlfriends and being married one day. I think Asian women are concerned that they don't feel that there's anybody that they can marry out of the Asian American pool, and so we have to reckon with this not only certainly in political terms, but in sociological terms. Right. And as a father also of a young boy, a young man, if you will. I'm concerned from that standpoint, too, that, you know, unless he is deemed sought after, he will lose out in society, and he may turn and young men and boys will turn. And we just cannot have that as a society. And I feel like things are a little bit off kilter. We need to kind of take a deep, you know, hard look at that.
Mila Atmos: [00:26:10] Oh, totally. Well, that's a question that I have been asking myself in these last, I don't know, nine years, ten years since Trump has been on the scene. Because I think there's a way that we talk about the issues as if they only affect one part of the electorate, but actually, I think they are intersections of interests between, let's say, the 21-year-old Rogan Bro and the young Asian American living in Queens. And from your work, where do you think those lines cross? Where do they have common interests?
Varun Nikore: [00:26:47] Mm. Well, that's a great question. I need to ponder. I think there's a lot of disaffected young Asian men in this country. I see it in my Reddit forums. I'm a lurker because I, I feel like I need to understand better what's in the minds of young men and young Asian men. And what I'm sort of seeing is like, for example, I saw a post recently where someone had uploaded a selfie of their haircut and they were asking in this forum, like, is this haircut attractive enough to, you know, females? And there was this long thread. And so what's sort of that shows to me is a lot of insecurities And I think part of this might be related to the fact that, you know, a given example of my son, who was a senior in high school when the pandemic hit, and I would say that age cohort are still reckoning with what had happened, sort of like looking at the world and seeing that the world was maybe not a safe place anymore, and that they retreated into their inner selves. They retreated to their basements, if you will. They retreated to
video games. They retreated to the comforts of home life. I think it had a huge psychological toll, not only on Asian men, but, you know, a lot of young people, male and female. And I, I think we're still kind of coming out of that in many respects. But one of the ways it sort of had an effect on politics and the electorate is that anybody with a strong voice, it was like a magnet. Like people were just being attracted to strong voices and finite opinions because folks were just looking for a path forward. And I don't think we on the left really provided a home, not necessarily from a political standpoint, but from just like, "hey, you know, you could recover by being positive. You could recover by putting yourself out there in the world, in society." And so perhaps the dark forces on the the right were a little bit more attractive. And the Joe Rogans of the world were also kind of alluring. And I can't remember exactly if it was Bill Clinton or James Carville, but I kind of say that they're the same person anyway, have often said that it's, in politics, you know, sometimes it's better to be strong and wrong, than right and weak. And Donald Trump in this election is very strong and wrong. And perhaps we were right, but weak in terms of our rhetoric and our narrative, and we just didn't really give people a home, I would say in some respects. And so those forces won out, right? I mean, there were roughly 10 million less voters who voted for Democrats in this election than in 2020. So I think in some way, you know what I've maybe tried to explain, even though I'm still open to the causes of our loss in this election, that that may be true in some small part.
Mila Atmos: [00:30:08] Right. Like you said, it's early days, so we don't have all the numbers, but approximately 10 million people didn't show up to vote this time. And, you know, I've been telling my friends in Indonesia who cannot comprehend the outcome. I said, I can't really explain it, except that people didn't want to come and vote for her, you know, or didn't want to come and vote for Democrats. And those are intricately intertwined, of course. And if you're listening to somebody like Bernie Sanders, he's made a clear argument that Democrats have abandoned the working class. And by definition, a lot of young people are working class and a lot of AAPI voters are young. So, you know, of course, when you're young, you don't have as much money as when you're older, full stop. You just got out of college. Or even if you didn't go to college, then you have even less money. So in your mind, if you're thinking about AAPI voters as being young and working class, how would you go about building political power and build that movement that you referred to at the beginning?
Varun Nikore: [00:31:13] Well, first, I think we need to do a deep dive in some research and figure out exactly what are the motivations behind the insecurities, right. Because the folks on the right appealed to their insecurities And rather than focus on the left appealing to their insecurities, I want to know what's going to make them feel secure. Right. How do we talk to young voters, working class voters, in a way that they feel positive about their futures and secure about their futures, and even show them through a historical context that by every measure, economically at least, that people are better off in Democratic administrations, the stock market, GDP growth, interest rates. I mean, they are better off in Democratic administrations. There's less debt in Democratic administrations. We even had a president who eliminated the debt. Bill Clinton not many people remember that. It was only for a fleeting.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:20] People don't remember. Yeah. People don't remember.
Varun Nikore: [00:32:23] year or so. Right before George W Bush came into office. But these are the types of things we need to research and appeal to. Going forward, I hope we do a better job. I've often said I feel that the left needs a communications think tank connected to the party apparatus, because we just don't know how to talk to people anymore. We love to talk about our ten point plan. And what was it that appealed to a lot of voters from Donald Trump? It was rinse and repeat. It was transphobia. It was people flooding across the border that was effectively his campaign strategy. The human mind cannot remember 1 or 2 key narratives. And so why we on the left continue to trot out, you know, all of our campaign ideas and strategies? Yeah, we can do that. Have that on the website. Fantastic. If somebody wants a plan like an economist or someone else, fantastic. There are... Yes, there are a few voters that need a ten point plan. The vast majority of the electorate does not. They want to know in 1 or 2 words, in 1 or 2 key phrases, what you're all about. Right. And we don't do that very effectively.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:39] Yeah. We don't. Well, I will say, though, in defense of the vice president, she tried and then she was accused of being too thin on the policies. But nobody, nobody cares about the fact that Donald Trump didn't ever say anything about policy and just, you know, vilifies immigrants. You know, so it's like...
Varun Nikore: [00:33:55] And a lot of people criticizing Vice President Harris for not having those policies, frankly, were mainstream media journalists.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:03] Yeah. I mean, I think it's just.
Varun Nikore: [00:34:05] They wanted to do this analysis. Maybe the American peopleweren't asking for it.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:08] They weren't. They weren't. They don't care. I mean, people are on Instagram and on Twitter or on or Facebook or whatever, and they want, you know, give me the two second like literally two second recap and well, like mass deportation. Now, speaking of which, I want to pivot here to the reality of Trump having won the election and talk about the many undocumented Asians that are in this country, because of course, there's an idea, there's this perception that the only undocumented people in the country come from Latin America, and that's not true. So what is the work that you're doing right now in these communities, especially in these precious two months before the new administration takes over?
Varun Nikore: [00:34:53] Well, we as an organization had an emergency board meeting on Friday, and we are trying to figure out what our path forward as an organization and as a community. Is it part two of what we did in the years of 2016 to 2020, or do we need to be a little bit more tactically diverse in fighting back and pushing back? How do we go on the offense? How do we prepare? Not necessarily for the 2028 presidential election or even the midterms in two years. How do we prepare for the 2030 election as a precursor to the next decade, so that if we can build state legislative wins in 2030, then we will control redistricting in many states that will allow us to get more elected in Congress and as a building block, if you will, in a reverse pyramid. Right. We need state legislatures to flip. We need more state legislatures, and we hope many of them are AAPI so that we can win at the federal level. And I think that what started after Trump's first win is our wider recognition on the left to build more at the state and local level. So our organization is going to absolutely 100% be focused on state level and local level policies that will continue to engage the electorate, because one of the things that we were saying to many donors last year when we started to first pitch our plan, frankly, was we need an insurance policy in the states in case we don't win at the federal level. And lo and behold, I don't know if anybody would have predicted this election the way that it was, but it happened. We've lost the House, the Senate, and certainly the presidency. And so we can fight back the most in states that are the seven
battleground states as well as others. Certainly they're all important. But where AAPIs are growing the fastest is in the South and the Sunbelt. And as we look forward even to the midterms and 2028 and beyond, this is the future battleground map of the United States of America. It is Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina. And so we need to plant flags in each and every one of those states. Our organization helped launch the local main AAPI organizations in Arizona and Texas. And we have plans for some other states as well, but as a bulwark as a way to continue to engage the electorates on a state and local basis. Eventually, those dividends will pay off. And so we cannot rely on instant gratification by winning the White House and say, "all is done, we've won. Let's take our foot off the gas." No, we need to have a longer term view, as Asians typically do, if I'm able to stereotype our large community. We need to have that longer view of the 2030s, because otherwise we're going to continue to not only lose elections, but we're not going to be able to empower our own community. They need to see that there is state and local electeds in their local communities in order for them to feel like that this country truly belongs to them and that they caused this to happen, right? They need that ownership and they need to see that in their local communities. And we're not going to see that necessarily as much at the federal level. Yeah. It would have been great to have a, the first Asian Black female president of the United States of America. Okay. Well, that's not to be. Let's move on. Let's focus. Let's put our heads down. Let's figure out why this happened. Let's move forward. But let's engage strategically rather than do the sexy shit that will lead to short term gains but long term loss.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:10] Yeah. Let's talk about that because we know that, for example, a state like Texas is essentially a non-voting state, that there are, in fact, enough registered Democrats. If they had just turned out, they could have turned that state blue. But they just don't do it. And I have no idea why. You know, I think in my mind I'm speculating now, of course, because I don't actually know. But in my mind it seems that people are like, well, Texas is a red state anyway, so it doesn't matter if I vote or not, it's going to be red. Instead of being like, well, why don't I just vote anyway? Because every single vote counts. And if you can get closer and closer, this will, you know, be proof of concept for the next election. Although, you know, you're very optimistic that we will have another election because Trump has already said he wants to cancel them, he wants to be dictator and he wants to have no more elections. So I hope that we will have more elections. But in case we don't, you know, building power at the local and
state level is great. But how far can that go and how fast can you move? Because the reality is that, you know, this is the second time that his administration will be in the white House. And I think they know where all the buttons are and they can move much more quickly. So in terms of, let's say Texas or Arizona, pick one, what is the work that you think is going to be most effective in the short term?
Varun Nikore: [00:40:31] In the short term.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:32] Yeah, right. Because we don't have a lot of time, right. It could be in the next year that, that people get deported, that we will have, you know, mass prisons that... That this is really going to go sideways fast. And it's possible that it won't, because it's also possible that this administration could be as incompetent as the last one and be slow and be mired in their own problems, so they can't move as quickly as they want to. But let's assume they do. Let's assume they move fast.
Varun Nikore: [00:40:58] I think just as sort of an initial strategy going forward, let's pick Texas, because it seems on paper today that it might not have performed as even conservative folks might have thought, you know, in terms of like Democratic vote share in this 2024 election. So I think we continue to try to mobilize the grassroots, get them to see the connection between voting locally and the policies that are going to be instituted. So one practical example is in the state of Texas, and it's already started. Now the Republicans and legislature are going to introduce a second attempt at a bill to restrict land ownership to certain members of the AAPI community, namely Chinese, North Koreans, and Iranian Americans, as well as Russians. Right. And so it's called an alien land law. Several states in the last two years were successful. I believe Florida was one of them. By virtue of the organizing on the ground, we were the local organization, Rise AAPI Texas, run by Nabila Mansoor, activated the AAPI community, had 100 plus people show up in Austin early last year to fight back, and I think the Republicans got a little bit scared, but they are coming back in the next session in January with a vengeance. They already have draft bills written so that they can attempt to pass this again, and they have a stronger likelihood of passing this. But one of the things that I think folks don't realize is every time legislators come after, and presidents come after, our community, we rise up. We fight back. Now, we may not be successful. We may be successful. It's hard to tell at this moment, but in the process of us fighting back, we solidify not only this recognition of the term AAPI, but we grow our
organization's capabilities. We grow this movement that will not only have an effect in Texas, but also that will continue to be that ripple, if you will. When you throw the the rock into the pond, that ripple goes all across the nation. Other AAPIs, other allies will see our ability to fight back as one of the most marginalized communities. So that's what I view as the art of the possible. And if you think back as one anecdote, right, I would say the collective left were able to effectively fight back against the Muslim ban by showing up at airports and other government facilities all around this nation through this mass act of protest. And so, in large measure, when we rise up, we get activated. I think right now we're all feeling a little bit morally dejected. But I think we'll get our gumption back and we will be able to fight back. But also, at least there's another positive. We know that Trump can't serve another term. Eventually, he will have his day of reckoning, whether he is able to fulfill a four year term or not, I don't know. But eventually the chickens will come home to roost, and I feel like we should have solace in the fact that this is the end of Donald Trump. It may not be the end of Trumpism, but we will be able to come out of another dark period stronger than we were before. And we will be smarter, we will be more organized. We will be more resourced because I will will it our community will will it into action. We cannot allow the same thing that happened in in 2024 to ever happen again. And I'm positive that it won't. But we need to. And it starts with me, you know, personally to exert my voice in a stronger way, in a louder way. I was closed mouth in this election. I should have called out the campaign committees. I should have called out the independent groups for not investing earlier, and I should have been more public about that. So you can count on that for me, but we each need to be louder going forward and say this is unacceptable, what we just live through. We had the ability; we showed folks on the left a way to overcome by finding those 750,000 voters that could have been persuaded in this election. But I will take that on personally. I can't expect anybody else to do that. But I'm hoping that if I take this on and I'm public about it and I'm loud about it, that you will find a little strength to do that too.
Mila Atmos: [00:45:48] Yeah. Well said. Well, every week on Future Hindsight, I ask my guests to share a civic spark. One small step we can all take to be more empowered and ignite collective change. And you've just shared a bunch of things. So just one more. What's a good way to turn the insights you've shared with us into action?
Varun Nikore: [00:46:09] Show up at a school board meeting. Simple as that.
Mila Atmos: [00:46:13] Yeah. That's a good one.
Varun Nikore: [00:46:13] If you've never been. If you've never been engaged before, just show up at a school board meeting. The fights ahead often lead out of what comes and is discussed at school board meetings. And if you can engage in that most local of ways, you will gather insights and start to fight back in a way that we all need to going forward.
Mila Atmos: [00:46:35] Thank you. Last question. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Varun Nikore: [00:46:41] I mean, my community makes me hopeful. I, I am not dejected. I, I allowed myself 30 minutes of dejection on election night and then I moved on. So what gives me hope, frankly, is all that I saw. We had a volunteer who came to me. A family friend's daughter named Pri and Pri was just gushing with excitement and she made me get reconnected to this optimism that I forgot that I had, and she really inspired me. And she graduated from college a few months ago and said, I cannot find a job right now. I need to work on this campaign. I need to help get Vice President Harris elected. And then the next thing I know, she moves from Maryland to Georgia and starts volunteering on campaigns. She turned into this super volunteer and I was just like, wow, you know? And she is a representative example, frankly, of what I saw. And I really want to give these people a home so that they can continue to do this work if they want to do it professionally or just do it on the side. And wow, I felt like I was a kid again, just being around her. It was really amazing to watch and inspiring.
Mila Atmos: [00:47:56] Well, that is truly very hopeful. Thank you very much, Varun, for joining me on Future Hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you on the show.
Varun Nikore: [00:48:05] So amazing. Terima kasih.
Mila Atmos: [00:48:07] Kembali. Varun Nikore is the Executive Director of AAPI VictoryAlliance.
Remember, civic action doesn't have to be complicated. It's about small steps that spark progress. Like sharing this episode with a friend. Let's recap this week's civic spark and
fire up our collective power. Varun wholeheartedly agrees with the philosophy of starting small because the small things aren't really small. Show up to a school board meeting. Change starts locally and works upward from there. And if you're able to show up in your community, you'll reinforce an optimism in your civic action.
Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by David Noll, co-author of Vigilante Nation: How State Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy. That's next time on Future Hindsight.
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Thank you so much for your support and thanks for tuning in. Until next time, see clearly, act boldly, and spark the change you want to see.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and me.
The Democracy Group: [00:50:04] This podcast is part of the democracy Group.