✨This Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month and every day, we are inspired by our National Civic Impact Innovators who, in this moment, are stepping up to protect, defend, and mobilize our AAPI communities. From fighting back against ICE raids to holding space for collective healing and building real power on the ground, they’re moving with purpose to fight back against a system and administration trying to silence and erase us. Over the next weeks, we’ll be sharing our AAWPI fellows’ stories: their “why,” their fire, and how they’re making change, right now, for our communities. First up is Mona Mangloña Jacobs💫, one of our incredible Pennsylvania fellows who is creating a brick-and-mortar community center that will also serve as a free thrift store and hub for community organizing in the Mariana Islands (a US territory), fueled by the Indigenous Chamorro diaspora in Pennsylvania and across the country. “I’m an Indigenous Chamoru organizer, social worker, and artist from the island of Luta, now based between Pennsylvania and the Marianas. My work lives at the intersection of healing, systems change, and creative resistance — always rooted in community care. My AAWPI project mobilizes Inafa’maolek — the Chamoru value of reciprocity and mutual care — as a community organizing framework to address basic needs access in Luta. Beginning with Project Prom and expanding into a community needs assessment and resource-sharing model, this work lays the foundation for a long-term Community Hub: a place grounded in cultural preservation, intergenerational connection, and collective care. Being queer, nonbinary, and disabled, I bring my full self into this work. Through art, storytelling, and relationship-building, I seek to reclaim and reweave our communal ways of knowing — where liberation looks like stocked closets, shared meals, and spaces that honor our elders, youth, and ancestors alike. This is more than a project. It’s a movement back to each other.” Follow Mona and her AAWPI project: From Luta, For Luta (fb)

Today, we joined Asian Americans United, APIA PA and the Save Chinatown Coalition in front of Philadelphia City Hall with a clear message for city leaders: NO ARENA IN THE HEART OF OUR CITY! For two years, our Philly communities have been fighting a proposed Sixers arena that would destroy Philly’s 150-year old Chinatown, and City Council will vote soon on whether to approve construction. “Our question for City Council and Mayor Cherelle Parker is: Who do you work for? Do you work for the people of this city or do you work for the billionaires who own the Sixers?” - Jenny Zhang/ API PA We WON’T stop fighting for Chinatown — Join us this Saturday, September 7th from 1pm-4pm for a march and rally to Save Chinatown! RSVP at link in bio. (fb)