CAAAV, the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, was founded in 1986. It is a multi-issue, pan-Asian grassroots membership organization fighting for racial, social, and economic justice. This questionnaire asks about immigration and housing issues.

2018 New York State - State Primaries Questionnaire

Founded by working-class Asian American women in 1986, CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities has been fighting for a New York City built on social justice and open to everyone, regardless of class, race, sexuality, gender or religion. CAAAV’s mission is to build grassroots community power across diverse poor and working-class Asian immigrant and refugee communities for racial, gender, and economic justice towards systemic and institutional change CAAAV wants every tenant, every working-class person, everyone who has been marginalized to be an organizer for their community and to raise their voices against the rich and the powerful.

Although there is more to be done, especially with the rising cost of living and gentrification, CAAAV has taken necessary steps toward building a more democratic and egalitarian city. We have organized the Southeast Asian community in the Bronx to challenge the failed Welfare to Workfare programs, and advocated for the rights of street vendors in Chinatown who were targeted by the NYPD during former NYC Mayor Giuliani’s Quality of Life campaign. It has incubated projects that would later become their own organizations, including the NYC Taxi Workers Alliance, Domestic Workers United, and Mekong NYC, and pressured the city to allocate $14 million to build parks and open green space accessible to Chinatown and Lower East Side residents along the East River Waterfront, rather than the original plan of luxury developments. Finally, CAAAV has continued to organize hundreds of tenants and youth to fight their landlords and NYCHA to stay in their homes, to demand greater language access and healthier living conditions in Chinatown’s rent-stabilized housing and public housing in Long Island City.

We want residents to be informed on how candidates will protect the neighborhood from mass displacement and ensure improved living conditions for our communities and to demand what they deserve from their political leaders and to actively strive for a city that respects them and the needs of their community regardless of immigration status.To do this, we ask our NY state candidates to state whether they agree withour membership base – rent-stabilized Chinese immigrant tenants in Chinatown and Bangladeshi, Korean, and Chinese immigrant public housing tenants in Queensbridge Housing Development – on the below positions.

Candidate Name: Howie Hawkins, Green Party candidate for Governor of New York

DO YOU SUPPORT THE FOLLOWING (YES or NO)

IMMIGRATION

1. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be disbanded and banned from entering New York State. YES

2. Families should not be detained in detention centers and should be able to stay with sponsors until their case is heard before a judge. YES

3. All undocumented immigrants, young and old, should have a pathway to citizenship and until then, non-citizens should have the opportunity to vote in New York State regardless of their immigration status. YES

HOUSING

1. To make up for the severe cuts to social services and housing from our federal government, the State and City should use its resources from either: 1) taxing the wealthy or corporations in our State or 2) pull from other state budget allocations such as law enforcement or jails/prisons. YES

2. There should be an investment in communities rather than criminalization. To strengthen rent-regulated housing, the Department of Homes and Community Renewal should eliminate vacancy decontrol and Major Capital Improvements (MCI) rent increases. YES

3. The Attorney General’s office must prosecute predatory landlords who use tenant harassment and other illegal tactics to deregulate rent-regulated housing. YES