AARW’s 2025 Impact Report
45 Years of Building pan-Asian Power & Fighting Displacement
Note from the Co-Executive Directors
45 years ago, AARW was founded by organizers, artists, and culture workers committed to fighting displacement in all its forms. That commitment remains our north star today.
In a year marked by ICE raids in our communities, skyrocketing rents, and political attacks on immigrants, our members rose to meet the moment with courage, discipline, and love. Together, we strengthened our anti-displacement framework, defended families targeted by detention and deportation, and mobilized for affordable housing and rent control across the state.
Through every challenge, our community showed what we’ve always known: we keep each other safe.
As we close our 45th anniversary year, we honor the generations who built AARW—and celebrate the new leaders carrying our work forward. The tools may evolve, but the heart of our movement remains the same: solidarity, resistance, and deep care for one another.
In solidarity,
Kevin Lam & Nicole Eigbrett
Program Highlights
General Member Spaces
Since the start of 2025, AARW has renewed our intentions to build and deepen leadership skills amongst our general member base! These nearly monthly spaces are welcome to all community members who identify with the pan-Asian diaspora, especially people who are working-class, queer and trans, college-aged or a young professional, or simply looking for a political & movement home to learn how to organize for justice.
Together, with hundreds of members, we developed our knowledge, political analysis, and practice on topics like: Organizing under the Trump 2.0 Administration, Dalit History, the Southeast Asian deportation crisis, somatics and grounding, housing justice, and more!
Highlights:
30+ members stepped up into leadership by joining the Rent Control Campaign Team
Monthly gatherings consistently connected community from across Greater Boston
Members facilitated workshops alongside staff—deepening ownership of AARW’s political home
Dorchester Organizing Training Initiative (DOT-I)
DOT-I develops the leadership of Vietnamese, Black, and Brown youth and young adults from Dorchester who are committed to creating change from the ground up.
Highlights:
Grew from 9 to 15 youth organizers
Intentionally expanded to build a multiracial cohort of Black & Southeast Asian youth leaders
Youth-led actions for AARW’s “Louder for Lan” campaign, and spoke at statewide events
In collaboration with VietAid, our Summer youth staff facilitated political education for 14 new youth leaders
Camberville South Asian Leadership Training (C-SALT)
The Camberville South Asian Leadership Training (C-SALT) is a co-learning space for South Asian youth and young adults (ages 16+) from Cambridge and Somerville.
Highlights
Over the past 3 years, C-SALT has grown into a powerful organizing space, expanding in size and impact.
Our 2025 Cohort of seven participants participated in an overnight retreat to start the program and 12 bi-weekly sessions from July to December. They are now working on a storytelling project, where they are collecting stories from South Asian people living in Cambridge about their experiences paying rent, in collaboration with Homes For All’s rent control campaign.
Women’s Circle
Women Circle is AARW’s newest space for working-class Vietnamese mothers and women who are long-term residents of Dorchester. We recognize the gendered impacts that detentions and deportations have in the Southeast Asian community, where the primary caretakers are often women.
This group of Vietnamese women, already leaders in their family systems and communities, convened to learn about AARW’s current campaigns, connect about their shared experiences, and build their political education and leadership skills.
Highlights
Women’s Circle Celebrated their 1 year anniversary
Participated in a forest bathing workshop
Canvassed and gathered ballot signatures Homes For All’s rent control campaign
“As someone who came in with little to no understanding of South Asian leadership, political action, caste, facilitating, or really anything that the program had to do with, I left with a broad understanding and just feeling much better about my knowledge of these topics and so many more.”
— C-SALT LeaderSoutheast Asian Deportation Defense (SEAD)
2025 marks 50 years since the end of “The American War in Southeast Asia”. For over two decades, Southeast Asian refugees across the state and country have been targeted for mass detentions and deportations. AARW organizes with and for Southeast Asian community members who are directly impacted by criminalization, detention and deportation. We provide accompaniment, leadership development, and collective care for individuals and their families navigating the trauma of deportation and detention. We are organizing towards the liberation of all our people where we live in a world free of criminalization and deportation, and free of borders.
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In December 2024, our community mobilized for a powerful final push in the campaign to keep Lan home. With coordinated organizing and critical legal support, we successfully extended her court decision—giving her more time to remain in the U.S. and stay with her family. This moment was the culmination of months of build-up: political education sessions with our members, a multi-episode podcast series amplifying Lan’s story, and sustained pressure on elected officials to take a stand. The action itself was co-planned with many of our movement partners, reflecting the collective strength it takes to confront the deportation machine. More than 500 immigrant organizers and community members from across MA marched in downtown Boston, from the JFK Federal Building to the State House, demanding ‘Not one more deportation!’
Following Lan’s Campaign, AARW, alongside many movement partners, helped seed the vision for what has become the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts, a rapid response hotline and statewide network of immigrant-led base-building organizations and our allies. Our statewide coalition of multiracial, multilingual immigrant organizers moves together on deportation defense campaigns, trainings, and resources to protect our immigrant and refugee neighbors.
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In spring of 2025, one of our community members, Dong Nguyen, was detained by ICE. AARW supported organizing for his release through:
organizing community “power hours” to make calls to elected officials
launching a toolkit to support his campaign
and mutual aid support
The Asian Outreach Center at Greater Boston Legal Services, our community legal partner, filed a habeas and won the case for his release. To celebrate Dong’s release and commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Wars in Southeast Asia, we organized a celebration for our community members and partners, “50 Years: Refuge & Home in Boston”. This event invited our members to reflect on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war in Southeast Asia, and offer a narrative shift and vision for what AARW and other Southeast Asian movement organizations envision for our communities in the next 50 years.
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In Fall 2025, ICE raids escalated across our communities under Patriot 2.0. At least 9 community members in Dorchester were arrested during a Raid in September, and AARW sprang into action to support these members and their families. In addition to direct support, we issued a community alert and launched a community guide for safety planning and family preparedness.
Housing Justice
AARW played a critical leadership role in the statewide Keep Mass Home campaign to bring rent control to the November 2026 ballot—a historic effort that required collecting 120,000 signatures from voters across Massachusetts between September and November 2025.
With an organizational goal of 3,000 signatures, our community rose far beyond expectations. More than 30 deeply engaged AARW members stepped into action through our Rent Control Campaign Team (RCCT), many of whom built their organizing skills through our monthly member meetings. Together, RCCT members canvassed every weekend across the region—from Dorchester and Jamaica Plain to Allston-Brighton, Somerville, Cambridge, Malden, Quincy, and beyond—bringing us closer than ever to securing rent control for working-class families across the state.
“I grew up housing insecure most of my life and experienced some homelessness due to rising rents, stagnating incomes, and lack of resources to fight back against landlords. This campaign and the broader mission to provide dignified housing for all is deeply personal to me. It’s been gratifying and energizing to help contribute to the housing justice movement in MA.”
-Van, AARW Member
45th Anniversary
In May, we gathered with more than 300 members, elders, youth, partners, and supporters to celebrate AARW’s 45th anniversary—a powerful reminder of the community that has carried this organization across generations.
The evening honored our roots, uplifted the stories of those who have shaped our movement, and showcased the leadership of today’s members who are driving our work forward. From cultural performances to community awards, the gala was both a celebration and a recommitment to the fights ahead. We are deeply thankful to everyone who showed up, donated, volunteered, and helped make this milestone a testament to the strength of our movement.
Movement Partners
Homes for All Massachusetts is a statewide formation of grassroots housing justice groups working to halt displacement, increase community control of land, and win housing justice. With Homes for All Mass, we are fighting for the human right to housing together with a diverse array of allies including community groups, organized labor, faith communities, advocacy organizations, and more. AARW currently sits on the leadership team for Homes for All Mass, and activated and engaged our members to canvas and collect ballot petition signatures for the statewide rent control campaign this year. www.homesforallmass.org
The Asian Pacific Islanders Civic Action Network (APIsCAN) is a statewide network whose mission is to advance the interests of Massachusetts’ Asian and Pacific Islander American communities by promoting a shared agenda to further equity and is rooted in a commitment towards racial and wealth equity of the Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. AARW participates in APIsCAN as one of the steering committee member organizations providing guidance and thought partnership for the coalition on moving our collective agenda. www.massapiscan.org
The Boston Asian American Film Festival (BAAFF) celebrated its 17th anniversary this past year. BAAFF was seeded at AARW in the early 2000s during the time when the organization focused on arts and culture organizing. As a program of AARW, it has been exciting to see the continued growth and reach of BAAFF to engage communities through Asian American media and film. In the spring of 2025, we coordinated with BAAFF to be one of the host sites for the Southeast Asian Freedom Network’s National Tour of “Taking Root”, a docu-series highlighting the Southeast Asian refugee experience in Philadelphia. Through this event, we engaged 100+ community members to take collective action to demand an end to the Southeast Asian deportation crisis. www.baaff.org
The Southeast Asian Freedom Network (SEAFN) formed in 2002 to create a united front in response to the detentions and deportations of Cambodian refugees. In 2023, AARW officially joined as a member organization to be in deeper relationship and thought partnership with Southeast Asian movement leaders and grassroots organizations fighting against mass detentions and deportations, and about how to continue resourcing and cultivating Southeast Asian leadership for our movements. www.seafn.org