Operation Warp Speed

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed 

 

Operation Warp Speed
Official seal of Operation Warp Speed
Active	May 15, 2020 – February 24, 2021 (285 days)
Disbanded	Transitioned to White House COVID-19 Response Team
Country	United States
Allegiance	United States
Part of	U.S. Department of Defense U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Other various government agencies
Engagements	Coronavirus disease 2019
Website	Coronavirus: Operation Warp Speed

Operation Warp Speed (OWS) was a public–private partnership initiated by the United States government to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. The first news report of Operation Warp Speed was on April 29, 2020, and the program was officially announced on May 15, 2020. It was headed by Moncef Slaoui from May 2020 to January 2021 and by David A. Kessler from January to February 2021. At the end of February 2021, Operation Warp Speed was transferred into the responsibilities of the White House COVID-19 Response Team.

The program promoted mass production of multiple vaccines, and different types of vaccine technologies, based on preliminary evidence, allowing for faster distribution if clinical trials confirm one of the vaccines is safe and effective. The plan anticipated that some of these vaccines will not prove safe or effective, making the program more costly than typical vaccine development, but potentially leading to the availability of a viable vaccine several months earlier than typical timelines.

Operation Warp Speed, initially funded with about $10 billion from the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) passed by the United States Congress on March 27, 2020, was an interagency program that includes components of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA); the Department of Defense; private firms; and other federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

History

President Donald Trump formally announced Operation Warp Speed on May 15, 2020, in the White House Rose Garden.

On May 15, 2020, President Donald Trump officially announced the public-private partnership. The purpose of Operation Warp Speed was to coordinate Health and Human Services-wide efforts, including the NIH ACTIV partnership for vaccine and therapeutic development, the NIH RADx initiative for diagnostic development, and work by BARDA.

Operation Warp Speed was formed to encourage private and public partnerships to enable faster approval and production of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The name was inspired by terminology for faster-than-light travel used in the Star Trek fictional universe, evoking a sense of rapid progress.

The Food and Drug Administration announced on June 30, 2020, that a vaccine would need to be at least 50% effective for diminishing the severity of COVID-19 symptoms to obtain regulatory and marketing approval.

In January 2021, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that the program was expected to undergo a restructure and renaming under the Biden administration. Also in January 2021, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, former Operation Warp Speed lead, was told not to use the name Operation Warp Speed anymore. At the end of February 2021, responsibilities of Operation Warp Speed were transferred into the White House COVID-19 Response Team.

Goals

According to the Department of Health and Human Services' fact sheet, the main stated goal of Operation Warp Speed was to "produce and deliver 300 million doses of safe and effective vaccines with the initial doses available by January 2021, as part of a broader strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics".

Specific targets, as outlined in various media, include:

• support pharmaceutical companies for R&D of seven different vaccine candidates simultaneously and certain therapeutic compounds
• support several vaccine manufacturers for rapid scale-up of manufacturing capacity
• support organization and facilitate simultaneous FDA review of Phase I-III clinical trials on several of the most promising vaccine candidates
• facilitate manufacturing vaccine candidates while they remain pre-approved during prefinal clinical research to prepare for rapid deployment, if proven to be safe and effective
• coordinate with the Department of Defense for vaccine supply, production, and deployment around the United States, and track every vaccine vial and the injection schedule for each American receiving a vaccination

While coordination was expected with the FDA on technical matters, Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA would "provide technical and development assistance to Operation Warp Speed, but the manufacturers decide if they're going to go forward or not" and clarified that the agency had "drawn a very bright line at FDA between us and Operation Warp Speed because we're the independent regulator".

Budget and leadership

Operation Warp Speed used BARDA as the financial interface between the U.S. federal government and the biomedical industry. The program was initially being funded with $10 billion, with additional funds allocated through BARDA. Funding was increased to about $18 billion by October 2020.

Rick Bright, the BARDA director, was reassigned on or about April 22, 2020, following his resistance to (as he phrased it) "efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections". In May, new leadership was announced. Moncef Slaoui was named Operation Warp Speed's chief adviser. Slaoui is a vaccine researcher and, formerly, Chairman of Global Research and Development and Chairman of Global Vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline, where he led the development of five vaccines. General Gustave F. Perna, who served as commanding general of Army Materiel Command, was named Operation Warp Speed chief operating officer. Retired Lieutenant General Paul A. Ostrowski, who previously served as director of the Army Acquisition Corps, was the director of supply, production and distribution. Army Major General Christopher J. Sharpsten was the deputy director.

Alex Azar, Mark Esper, and Deborah Birx were on the board of directors of OWS, while Tony Fauci, Francis Collins, and Robert Redfield were nonvoting advisers.

Companies receiving research funding

See also: COVID-19 vaccine clinical research § Trial and authorization status

As of August 2020, eight companies were chosen for funding of some $11 billion to expedite development and preparation for manufacturing their respective vaccine candidates.

The vaccine developers, different vaccine technologies, and treatments receiving government research funding were:

Name	Technology	Amount	Date announced	Vaccine candidate	Date FDA authorized	Notes
Johnson & Johnson (Janssen Pharmaceutical)	Non-replicating viral vector	$1 billion	August 5, 2020	Ad26.COV2-S	February 28, 2021	This funding is in addition to $456 million the government awarded in March 2020.FDA authorized emergency use only.
AstraZeneca–University of Oxford and Vaccitech	Modified chimpanzee adenovirus viral vector	$1.2 billion	May 21, 2020	AZD1222	No FDA authorization.	First authorized December 20, 2020, in the United Kingdom. In March 2021, a number of countries paused use of the vaccine out of fears it may be implicated in cases of blood clotting observed in vaccine recipients.
Moderna	mRNA	$1.53 billion	August 11, 2020	mRNA-1273	December 18, 2020	The government had already given Moderna two grants of $483 million and $472 million. The $1.53 billion announced on August 11 brought the total investment to $2.48 billion. FDA authorized emergency use only.
Novavax	SARS-CoV-2 recombinant spike protein nanoparticle with adjuvant	$1.6 billion for advance commercial-scale manufacturing	July 7, 2020	NVX‑CoV2373		Funding to demonstrate commercial-scale manufacturing; federal government will own the 100 million doses produced, but will be made available for clinical trials
Merck and IAVI	Antiviral drug research and immune response therapy	$38 million	April 15, 2020			two vaccine projects terminated by Merck, January 25, 2021
Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline	Protein (insect cell lines) with adjuvant	$2.1 billion	July 31, 2020	VAT00008		On December 11, 2020, the companies announced that they would delay the vaccine's release until late 2021 because it produced "insufficient immune response" in elderly people.

Indirectly funded companies include:

• Inovio

As of October 2020, Operation Warp Speed had spent less than $1 billion to support the development and manufacturing of three monoclonal antibody treatments, versus almost $10 billion on six vaccines.

• Regeneron was to receive $450 million to develop and supply a monoclonal antibody drug, according to a government announcement on July 7, 2020.

Other companies involved in the Warp Speed program

Pfizer–BioNTech

The BioNtech project to develop a novel mRNA technology for a COVID-19 vaccine was called "Project Lightspeed", which started in mid-January 2020 at BioNTech's laboratories in Mainz, Germany, just days after the SARS-Cov-2 genetic sequence was first made public. In September 2020, BioNTech received €375 million (US$445 million) from the government of Germany to accelerate the development and production capacity of the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said that the company decided against taking direct Warp Speed funding for the development of the vaccine out of a desire "to liberate our scientists [from] any bureaucracy that comes with having to give reports and agree how we are going to spend the money in parallel or together".

But on July 22, 2020, Operation Warp Speed placed an advance-purchase order of $2 billion with Pfizer to manufacture 100 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine for use in the United States when the vaccine was shown to be safe, effective, licensed, and authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). On December 23, 2020, the Trump administration announced that they had ordered another 200 million doses from Pfizer. On November 9, the Pfizer–BioNTech partnership announced positive early results from its Phase III trial of the BNT162b2 vaccine candidate, and on December 11, the FDA provided emergency use authorization, initiating the distribution of the vaccine.

Pfizer head of vaccine research and development Dr. Kathrin Jansen initially said Pfizer was not a participant in Operation Warp Speed because it did not accept taxpayer funds for research and development, but Pfizer released a statement saying her comments had been "taken out of context" and confirmed that Pfizer was a part of the Warp Speed program. The White House confirmed Pfizer's involvement and the government's initial advance-order purchase for a hundred million doses of vaccine. Company representatives said in November that "the company is part of Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential coronavirus vaccine," and that "Pfizer is proud to be one of various vaccine manufacturers participating in Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential COVID-19 vaccine."

The United Kingdom was the first country to authorize the vaccine on an emergency basis on December 2, 2020. Emergency use authorization in the United States was issued December 11, 2020.

Distribution

Vaccine doses purchased by Operation Warp Speed were sent from manufacturers via UPS and FedEx to locations specified by state governments. The Federal Pharmacy Partnership delivers doses to CVS and Walgreens locations, which then send pharmacists for mass vaccinations at care facilities like nursing homes.

In October 2020, Alex Azar, at that time the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, predicted a hundred million available doses by the end of the year. The Trump administration later reduced the goal to twenty million doses. As of January 6, 2021, the CDC was reporting 17,288,950 doses distributed, but only 5,306,797 actually administered to a person. Of those, 3,416,875 were distributed and 511,635 administered through the Federal Pharmacy Partnership. General Gustave Perna said reporting delays cause the administration numbers to lag by 72 to 96 hours. By January 31, 2021, when Operation Warp Speed was being transferred to the Biden Administration, 63.7 million doses had been delivered of a total of 200 million doses that Pfizer and Moderna were contracted to provide by the end of March 2021.

The distribution effort was criticized for lack of coordination between federal and state governments, and lack of timely federal funding for mass vaccination campaigns. Other reasons cited included the Christmas holiday, employees declining to be vaccinated, a longer than typical time spent on paperwork or answering patient questions, the required observation time, and shortage of trained staff.

Reception

See also: COVID-19 vaccine § Society and culture

Cost

Although initially budgeted by Congress for about $10 billion in May 2020, Operation Warp Speed had spent $12.4 billion by mid-December on vaccine developers for the combined costs of R&D and pre-approval manufacturing for millions of vaccine doses.

Operation Warp Speed anticipated that some of these vaccines would not prove safe or effective, making the program more costly than typical vaccine development, but potentially leading to the availability of a viable vaccine several months earlier than typical timelines. The low prices of coronavirus vaccines were attributed to the high amount of research funding provided by Operation Warp Speed: despite preliminary data suggesting that the COVID-19 vaccines subsidized by the plan had higher effectiveness than flu vaccines, vaccine developers set initial pricing in line with those of the annual influenza vaccine.

Timeline

The goals of the project – to develop, manufacture, and distribute hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses by the end of 2020 – were initially criticized as being unrealistic, based on decades of experience in developing viral infection vaccines which normally require years or decades for assuring the chosen vaccine will not be toxic and have adequate efficacy.

Most viral infections do not have vaccines because the vaccine technology failed in early-stage clinical trials. Because many vaccines cause side effects, such as pain at the injection site, headaches, and influenza symptoms, safety testing requires years of observation in thousands of clinical trial participants. Similarly, sufficient time – a year or multiple years – is usually needed to be certain a vaccine has durable efficacy while the virus remains pandemic. Despite extensive previous research attempts to produce safe, effective vaccines against coronaviruses, such as SARS and MERS, all vaccine candidates for coronavirus infections have failed during clinical research, and no vaccine existed to prevent any coronavirus infection. To prepare for manufacturing and distribution, Operation Warp Speed expended resources and financing before the safety and efficacy results of vaccine candidates were known.

In the case of Operation Warp Speed, effective vaccines made by BioNTech in Germany and Pfizer and Moderna were given an emergency use authorization by the FDA in December 2020, established an exceptionally fast development and approval timeline for vaccines granted emergency marketing. Pfizer joined the Warp Speed program in July 2020, and signed a $1.95 billion contract to be paid out when the vaccine would be FDA approved, and included an initial order of 100 million vaccines. In December 2020, the Trump administration ordered 200 million additional vaccines from Pfizer.

Conclusion

At the end of February 2021, Operation Warp Speed transitioned into the White House COVID-19 Response Team under the Biden Administration.

Competition

There was potential that the Warp Speed project would expend effort and funding in direct competition with publicly traded American vaccine companies already fully engaged and financed for development. There was also the possibility that a billion dollars or more of U.S. taxpayer money would be expended on only American efforts or a narrow alternate choice, such as investing in one other vaccine platform – the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca candidate for which the U.S. already paid US$1 billion in May 2020 to receive 300 million doses for American use, when the AstraZeneca vaccine was successful in advancing to proof of safety and efficacy beyond its status as an early-stage Phase I–II trial in May.

Warp Speed did not partner with Chinese vaccine development organizations, or with the World Health Organization (WHO), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or the European Commission, which are coordinating and financing international programs for multiple vaccine development, having raised $8 billion together from international partners on May 4 for a Coronavirus Global Response. The U.S. government chose not to include Operation Warp Speed as part of the international Solidarity trial on vaccine development, organized by the WHO.

President Trump displays Executive Order 13962, which requires priority access to COVID-19 vaccines developed in the United States, signed December 8, 2020

On December 8, 2020, President Trump signed an executive order mandating that companies sell vaccine to the US before selling to any other countries (even if they already had contracts with other countries).

Concern for equitable access

The focus of Operation Warp Speed to deploy approved COVID-19 vaccines first for the American people raised ethical and logistical concerns that access to vaccines outside of the United States may be restricted during 2021, leaving low-to-middle-income countries with no or minimal supply. Concerns were elevated when the Trump administration withdrew its financial support for the WHO and COVAX, and whether the program would participate in international vaccination practices, optimization, and education against vaccine hesitancy and misinformation. In February 2021 after Operation Warp Speed was transitioned to the White House COVID-19 Response Team, the United States pledged to donate any vaccine surplus out of concern for vaccine-poor regions, such as Africa.

Vaccine hesitancy

Main article: COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and hesitancy

There was concern that the name and intended shortened timeline of Operation Warp Speed could encourage vaccine hesitancy, with one expert stating that "some of the language coming out of the White House is very damaging" because one argument of anti-vaccinators is that products are rushed to market without adequate testing. Failure of the public to have confidence in a new vaccine and refuse vaccination is a global health concern, which increases the risk of further viral spreading that could lead to ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks during 2020–21. A September 2020 survey found that half of American adults surveyed said they would not accept a vaccination if it was available at that time, and three-quarters expressed concerns about the pace of the process and fears that a vaccine might be confirmed before its safety and effectiveness are fully understood.

Leader neutrality

The leader of the Operation Warp Speed project, Moncef Slaoui, had been a board member of the U.S. vaccine developer, Moderna, and divested his shares in Moderna stock, at a potential personal gain of $10 million, raising questions of his neutrality in judging vaccine candidates. Although Slaoui resigned from the Moderna board when named to head Warp Speed, his share value in Moderna stock increased by $3 million in one day when Moderna announced an advance in vaccine clinical research. At the request of the incoming Biden administration, Slaoui resigned from the project in early January 2021.

Lawsuits and insider trading

Shareholders sued biotech firm Inovio, claiming the company misled the public when it reported how quickly it had designed the blueprint for its vaccine candidate. A class action lawsuit was filed in August 2020 against Vaxart in Northern California U.S. District Court for alleged securities fraud, a concern related to Vaxart executives enriching themselves by selling shares timed to positive news on vaccine development during mid-2020. Executives, board members, and investment firms holding shares in vaccine and therapeutic companies, including Moderna, Novavax, and Regeneron, took profits worth some US$1 billion (about €830 million) on positive news during 2020.

Asian American activism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_American_activism 

 

Rally for Asian American Women in Chinatown

Asian American activism broadly refers to the political movements and social justice activities involving Asian Americans. Since the first wave of Asian immigration to the United States, Asians have been actively engaged in social and political organizing. The early Asian American activism was mainly organized in response to the anti-Asian racism and Asian exclusion laws in the late-nineteenth century, but during this period, there was no sense of collective Asian American identity. Different ethnic groups organized in their own ways to address the discrimination and exclusion laws separately. It was not until the 1960s when the collective identity was developed from the civil rights movements and different Asian ethnic groups started to come together to fight against anti-Asian racism as a whole.

While racism has always been its main focus, Asian American activism has started to cover a more diverse range of issues such as women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, labor rights, criminal justice, affirmative action, and climate change in the past decades. The increasing heterogeneity of the Asian American population has further diversified the Asian American activism scene, as various new organizations emerge and new alliances are formed both within and beyond the Asian American community. Asian Americans have sought to effect social and political changes through legal means, strikes and rallies, literature, petitions, political campaigns, and even social media.

Background of early activism

Early Asian American activism was mainly in response to the racial discrimination they faced in the United States. The early immigrants faced widespread discrimination and were denied many of the same rights and benefits as white Americans. This is due in part to citizenship in the United States was defined through terms of race and gender, in particular, only white males could become citizens. From 1850-1952, exclusionary laws and policies, like the Chinese Exclusion Act, Alien Land Laws, Asiatic Barred Zone Act of 1917 and Immigration Act of 1924 prevented Asian Americans from gaining citizenship and the various rights and protections citizenship included.

In addition to discriminatory legislation, anti-Asian sentiments have existed in the United States and acts of violence have also been committed against Asian Americans ever since the first wave of immigrants arrived in the United States. Asian immigration mainly started with the discovery of gold (see California Gold Rush), California statehood, and work on the transcontinental railroad in the late 1840s, which was when discrimination and violence against the Chinese in America spread. Violent acts against Asian Americans, like the one which occurred in October 1871, when a mob murdered 19 Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles (Chinese Massacre of 1871), in July 1877, when a crowd in San Francisco burned much of the city’s Chinatown (San Francisco Riot of 1877), when miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, killed at least 28 Chinese in an 1885 massacre (Rock Springs Massacre), and when thirty-four Chinese miners were ambushed and murdered along the Snake River in Oregon in 1887 (Hells Canyon Massacre) have often been tolerated by American citizens and government.

Anti-Asian racism and violence were not limited to Chinese immigrants because later Japanese, Korean, Indian and Filipino immigrants were also treated with similar hostility and hate and subjected to attacks by the white-dominated American society. For instance, with the popularization of the "Yellow Peril" narrative, multiple Japanese restaurants and bathhouses were vandalized by a group of white supremacists in San Francisco in May 1907. In the same year in Bellingham, Washington, about 200 South Asian workers were evicted from their own houses and put into jail by a mob of white men. In 1913, when eleven Korean laborers arrived in Hemet, California by train, a mob of over a hundred furious white men threatened to use violence to force the laborers to leave the town, mistaking them for Japanese. Similarly, acts of violence against Filipino Americans also increased in the late 1920s when an attack on a Filipino dance hall in Watsonville by 400 white men was sparked by the publication of a photograph that showed a white teenage girl embracing a Filipino man.

In the face of extensive racial violence and exclusion in the United States, Asians have not been passive or submissive to the status quo. Despite the socioeconomic and political restrictions which were imposed on them, they have constantly sought to find different means to challenge white supremacy and resist racism. Asian Americans lamented the harsh regulations and discrimination which had been imposed upon them by the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882 – 1943) and the Angel Island Immigration Station (1910 – 1940). Angel Island detainees turned to silent protests by writing poetry, often bitter and angry in nature, on the walls. They also constantly challenged the exclusion laws by bringing cases to the court and argue for their equal rights. Moreover, in face of labor exploitation, Asian laborers went on strikes and protests to demand higher pay and better working conditions. Although the Asian American identity did not develop until 1960s, different Asian ethnic groups formed their own social and political groups to fight against discrimination and exclusion.

History

Asian exclusion era (1882 - 1952)

Amid the industrial capitalist expansion, a large number of Asian immigrants were admitted to the United States to fulfill the labor shortage. The majority of them were worked as manual laborers such as plantation workers and railroad workers for long hours and a small amount of pay. In response to the influx of Asian laborers, there has been a growing nativist hostility towards Asians in American society, which transformed into prevalent anti-Asian discrimination, violence and eventually exclusion laws. In face of the labor exploitation and exclusion, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese and South Asian immigrants actively resisted through legal means, strikes and protests, and letter writing to show they also deserved U.S. citizenship and protection of rights as White Americans. At the same time, despite being in the United States, many Asian immigrants maintained close ties to their home countries by actively participating in homeland politics such as independence movements and suffrage movements.

Chinese

See also: Chinese Exclusion Act

 

The anti-Chinese cartoon of The Chinese Must Go (1886)

In response the rising anti-Chinese sentiment and labor agitation of White workers during economic recessions, a series of exclusion laws targeted at Chinese were passed from 1870s to 1890s, such as Page Act of 1875, Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the Geary Act of 1892. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 specifically barred Chinese laborers from entering the country. For those who already settled in the United States, they were also restricted from reentering if they had left the country. In addition, this Act also made Chinese permanent aliens by excluding them from U.S. citizenship.

Chinese Americans have sought various ways to challenge the exclusion laws. Several civil rights organizations were created by Chinese Americans to fight against the Chinese Exclusion Act and Geary Act. For instance, Chinese American Citizens Alliance testified before congressional committees about Chinese-American rights, and the Chinese Equal Rights League published a pamphlet condemning the exclusion policies and their denial of Chinese citizenship. In addition, the first Chinese-language newspaper in the United States,The Chinese American, was established in 1883 to raise awareness of the racism against Chinese and unite the Chinese American community.

Moreover, Chinese Americans directly challenged the exclusion policies by circumventing the restrictions and bringing the cases to the courts. They adapted their migration strategies and exploited the loopholes in the laws. Knowing that foreign-born children of Chinese-American citizens were entitled to American citizenship, many Chinese fabricated paper documents to claim to be the offsprings of Chinese Americans to enter the U.S. and obtain citizenship. Others took advantage of the checks and balances of the American political system by using litigation in the federal courts to combat the forces that opposed their entry. They hired highly experienced attorneys and chose the courts that had the most favorable rules or laws for Chinese immigration. As a result, thousands of Chinese immigrants successfully entered the US through the writs of habeas corpus issued by the courts.

The Chinese resistance was not limited to the American continent and had expanded to many other regions in Asia. The Anti-American Boycott, or the Chinese Boycott of 1905, which spanned from 1905 to 1906, was an internationally coordinated boycott of U.S. goods and services which was staged in order to protest against the Chinese Exclusion laws in China and a handful of cities in Southeast Asia. Primarily, the boycott focused on the enforcement of the laws by the Immigration Bureau, which sought to deny entry to Chinese people who were legally exempted from the law, such as diplomats, merchants and their relatives, students and tourists. On May 10, 1905, the Shanghai Chinese Chamber of Commerce called for a boycott of American goods if certain conditions were not met regarding immigration and trade policies. The conditions were not met, and that summer, a unified boycott spread to ports up and down the Chinese coast. Throughout the boycott, Chinese consumers refused to buy, merchants refused to sell, and dockworkers refused to handle exports from the U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt attempted to soothe Asian American frustration by issuing an executive order which required the Immigration Bureau to uphold U.S. laws and respect the entry rights of the exempted classes; however, no meaningful legislation was passed in support of new Chinese-American immigration laws.

Korean

Similar to Chinese immigrants, Korean also faced prevalent discrimination when they came to work as laborers in the United States. The same economic logic was used to justify the exclusion of Korean because they were accused of stealing the jobs from the Whites. Like their Chinese peers, they contested the policy through legal means. In 1921, Easurk Emsen Charr, a Korean-born US Army veteran, petitioned for American citizenship on the basis of his military service in the US army. Although his petition was denied by the court on the basis that Koreans were "of Mongol family," this case was marked as one of the first significant challenges to exclusion laws initiated by Korean Americans.

Besides resistance to exclusion, Korean Americans also actively engaged in Korean independence movement. During the Japanese colonization of Korea between 1910 and 1945, many Koreans escaped the country and sought refuge overseas, particularly in the United States. In 1909, Korean National Association was founded in San Francisco to advocate for Korean independence. After 1910, mass protests were organized by Korean nationalists in the United States to denounce the Japanese's annexation of Korea and call for unity against Japanese colonizers. At the rallies, protestors sang the Korean national anthem and waved Korean flags. When later the domestic Korean nationalist forces were crushed by the Japanese military, the Korean nationalists in the U.S., Mexico and China were able to carry on the independence movement. In March 1919, the Korean National Association organized the first Korean Liberty Congress in Philadelphia and published the Proclamation of Independence of Korea. The conference laid the foundation for the formation of the Republic of Korea in 1948.

Filipino

Sofia de Veyra and the wives of the Second Philippine Parliamentary Mission at the White House with First Lady Harding

As immigrants, Filipinos also encountered rampant prejudice and discrimination in the United States. However, their experience was a little bit different from other Asians since they were allowed to be in the U.S., despite not as citizens. This is largely due to the U.S. colonization of the Philippines following the end of the Spanish-American War in 1901. Many Filipinos migrated to the mainland U.S. in search for economic opportunities, but they were relegated to the most low-ranking and most exploitable jobs. Deemed as uncivilized savages, they faced unequal treatment at work.

Trapped in what Manuel Buaken described as "a pit of economic slavery," Filipino workers started to organize collectively against labor exploitation and poor working and living conditions. The first Filipino American labor organization, Anak ng Bukid, or Children of the Farm, was created in 1928 in Stockton, California, and the first Filipino strike took place in Watsonville two years later. By 1930s, numerous Filipino labor unions emerged, including the Filipino Labor Union, which specifically called for higher wages, union recognition and improved working conditions. The labor movement did not achieve its first major success until 1939, after the establishment of the independent, all-Filipino union Filipino Agricultural Laborers Association (FALA) which aimed to unite Filipinos around the common goals of economic security and fighting against discrimination. The farm owners eventually agreed to most of the union's demands as a result of the strike of all asparagus workers during the peak of the profitable asparagus season.

Besides labor movement in the U.S., Filipino Americans were also heavily involved in the homeland politics like their Korean peers. Because of their status as colonized subjects, Philippine nationals held no political rights in the United States and could not vote or participate in U.S. politics. While Filipino men gained the right to vote in local Filipino elections in 1907, Filipina women did not gain the same rights until 1937. To advocate for Philippine independence, a group of Filipino politicians and their wives visited President Warren G. Harding in 1922. The wives of these delegates were led by Sofia de Veyra and were advocating not only for independence from the United States but also for suffrage rights in the Philippines. Through alliances with mainland American suffragists, Filipina activists organized a trans-Pacific suffragist movement and campaigned against imperialism. Although not much is known about this delegation, the women would spend decades advocating for their right to vote and other human rights causes.

Japanese

See also: Internment of Japanese Americans

The number of Japanese immigrants sharply increased as a result of the labor shortage after the restrictions of Chinese immigration in the late nineteenth century. A vast majority of the immigrants arrived in Hawaii as plantation workers in the late nineteenth century. Exploited as cheap and hard labor, Japanese immigrants were under a rigid system of control and physical punishment. To complain about the harsh working and living conditions on the plantations, they initiated a series of work stoppages in the 1880s and 1890s. However, the stoppages were not sufficient to alleviate the mistreatment, which eventually led to the "Great Strike of 1909" when thousands of Japanese workers across Hawaii protested against the plantation owners and demanded better pay and welfare.

As more Japanese left the plantations and entered the mainland U.S. for new economic opportunities, anti-Japanese sentiments also rose. Violence and discrimination targeted at Japanese were prevalent. In response to the growing racism stimulated by the "Yellow Peril" trope, Japanese immigrants formed their own organizations and social clubs to advance their interests as a group. While some vocally opposed to the discriminatory laws claiming that they were unconstitutional, some attempted to mold the mass of Japanese as respectable subjects that were assimilable to the mainstream American community. In 1922, Takao Ozawa, a Japan-born immigrant who had lived in the United States for more than twenty years, countered the US ban on naturalized citizenship on Japanese by filing his case to the Supreme Court. Instead of arguing that the racial restrictions were unconstitutional, Ozawa contended that Japanese people should be properly classified as "free white persons." As expected, he was denied citizenship because the Court thought he was not White enough to be naturalized.

Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Fred Korematsu

The exclusion of Japanese reached its peak after Japan's attack of Pearl Harbor during the World War II. Deeming the Japanese in the US as threats to the country's national security, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order to relocate and incarcerate over one hundred twelve thousand Japanese Americans to the internment camps across the country. A few Japanese challenged the constitutionality of the racially based curfews and incarceration. For instance, Minoru Yasui and Gordon Hirabayashi deliberately disobeyed the curfew orders to get arrested so that they could contest the constitutionality of the executive orders in the courts. Similarly, Fred Korematsu refused to leave his home for the internment camps and later brought his case to the Supreme Court, which, however, upheld the constitutionality of the internment. Inside the camps, Japanese were not passive either. Some protested against the poor working and living conditions, as seen in the strike at Tule Lake, but ended up being violently suppressed by the War Relocation Authority. After the war, a younger generation of Japanese Americans started to demand an official apology and reparations from the US government. Inspired by the civil rights movements in the 1960s, the "redress movement," instead of centering on the documented property losses, aimed to address the broader injustice and psychological suffering caused by the incarceration.

The era of social change (1960’s - late 20th century)

The 1960s is marked by a formation of a collective Asian American identity. Different ethnic groups came together to fight against anti-Asian racism. At the same time Asians were seen participating in activism that covered a more diverse range of sociopolitical issues, such as anti-war movement, labor movement, women's rights and LGBTQ+ rights movement.

Asian Americans for Action

Main article: Asian Americans for Action

The Asian American Movement

Main article: Asian American Movement

The 1960s was an era of social change. The rise of liberal, radical ideas especially among college students prompted a series of social and political movements against racism, colonialism, imperialism, gender inequality and so on. Among all the racially conscious movements, Asian American Movement was a middle-class reform effort which was organized by Asian Americans and it aimed to achieve racial equality, social justice and political empowerment in a culturally pluralistic American society. The Movement spanned from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, and it signified an uptick in representation and activism within the Asian American community, a response to the discriminatory policies and sentiments which it had faced for a very long time. The Asian American Movement was closely linked to other social and political activism during the same era such as the labor movements, Civil Rights Movement, anti-Vietnam War movement, Free Speech Movement and anti-imperialist movement.

Delano Grape Strike

Main article: Delano grape strike

The Delano Grape Strike was one of the first nationwide demonstrations initiated by Asian Americans. The Strike significantly impacted labor rights and unionization opportunities in the United States. On September 8, 1965, over 2,000 Filipino-American farm workers went on strike and refused to pick grapes in the valley north of Bakersfield, California. This strike initiated a series of activist and labor-related events that would occur over the next 5 years. At the height of the Civil Rights Era, the Delano Grape Strike aimed to improve rights for laborers and minorities in the United States, especially Filipino and Mexican Americans. Not only was the strike beneficial for the representation of Asian Americans in the political and activist sphere, but achieved widespread, tangible results for labor rights and the unionization of minorities in the United States. Lifelong activist, Larry Itiliong, spearheaded the movement and garnered the support of fellow activist Cesar Chavez to strike for better pay, adequate medical care, and retirement funds. The movement was met with backlash and hostility from growers and police, but received support from figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F Kennedy. Many households nationwide stopped buying grapes in support of this civil rights movement, and union workers in California dockyards let non-union grapes rot in port rather than load them. By the summer of 1970, many of the major California grape growers were forced to pay grape pickers an increase in wages to $1.80 an hour, plus 20 cents for each box picked, contribute to the union health plan, and ensure that their workers were protected against pesticides used in the fields. The Delano Grape Strike represented a turning point in Asian American activism and an exercising of constitutional rights that had been denied to Asian Americans for many years.

Third World Liberation Front Strikes

Main article: Third World Liberation Front strikes of 1968

In 1968, in the San Francisco Bay Area, activists from college campuses such as the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University protested the absence of Asian American experiences from university curricula and the Eurocentric curriculum employed by universities. College activists focused on a variety of issues, including establishing an ethnic studies college, improving the conditions of San Francisco's Chinatown, and protesting the eviction of Filipino and Filipina residents from the International Hotel (San Francisco). The battle for the International Hotel in San Francisco involved UC Berkeley students and different groups of activists, who protested the rapid urban renewal of largely minority communities. Predominantly Filipino and Filipina citizens were affected by these urban renewal policies, but the evictions were experienced by a number of different minority groups as well. The protests of these evictions started in late 1977, and symbolized the unification of the Asian American community to protest civil rights.

Throughout the 1970's in the Midwest, college students of Asian descent organized communities of support, and many eventually migrated to coastal cities that had stronger Asian communities. Asian American college students nationwide also protested the model minority framework that many Americans had used to view Asians. Opponents of this framework considered the challenges faced by Asian Americans in a white-dominated society nonexistent.

The murder of Vincent Chin

Main article: Killing of Vincent Chin

On June 19, 1982, a Chinese American man named Vincent Chin went out with friends in Detroit to celebrate his upcoming wedding. Two white men, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, thought Chin was Japanese beat him to death with baseball bats. Vincent Chin's murder was the first federal civil rights trial for an Asian American, and the two men responsible for Vincent Chin's murder were given a $3,000 fine and zero prison time. The sentencing incited national outrage and fueled a movement for Asian American rights. Vincent Chin's murder was the first federal civil rights trial for an Asian American.

Led by activist Helen Zia, several Asian American lawyers and community leaders banded together to create American Citizens for Justice. This group gathered several diverse groups like churches, synagogues, and black activists to protest the murderers sentencing. This movement inspired other Asian Americans across the country to hold their own demonstrations. Vincent Chin's death and the demonstrations that followed provided inspiration for a group that has faced a long history of discrimination in the United States. A result of the Killing of Vincent Chin and the trial that ensued was that there was now a larger population of people who could identify with the new pan-Asian American community and protest violations of their civil rights.

LGBTQ+ activism

Asian Americans have been actively involved in queer organizing since the 1950s. The establishment of Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian civil and political rights group in the US was made possible by Filipina Rose Bamberger who recruited the initial members of the group in 1955. Later during the 1970s and 80s, many Asian Americans played important leadership roles in queer activism and the AIDS movement. For instance, Crystal Jang was among the earliest Chinese Americans who publicly challenged anti-LGBTQ laws by speaking up against the Briggs Initiative, a California proposition that legalized the firing of all LGBTQ teachers. In the early 1980s, Unbound Feet, a Chinese American feminist and queer writing and performance collective, was established to address sexist and racist oppression in society, immigration, and family issues, and challenged stereotypes of Chinese women as passive and subservient. As out lesbian performers, their core members Tsui, Sam, and Woo helped bring visibility to lesbians within the Asian American community and obtained a large Asian lesbian following. In 1989, Kiyoshi Kuromiya founded Critical Path, one of the earliest and most comprehensive resources available to the public for treating HIV. In addition, since the late 1980s, Asian American queer publications have also thrived. For example, Trikone magazine was created by two silicon valley queer Indian engineers who tried to find a home for both their ethnicity and sexuality in 1986. A decade later, Al and Jane Nakatani published Honor Thy Children, a memoir of the loss of their three sons, of whom two were gay.  

Contemporary era (late 20th century - present)

Anti-racism

Asians4BlackLives

See also: Black Lives Matter

 

Asian Americans showing support for the Black Lives Matter movement in December of 2014.

Asians 4 Black Lives is a coalition of Asian Americans with diverse ethnic backgrounds such as Filipino Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Indian Americans, Chinese Americans, Pakistani Americans, Korean Americans, Burmese Americans, Japanese Americans, who serve as advocates for the Black Lives Matter Movement, which was established in 2014. Their main objective is to stand in solidarity with people of color and support Black communities which are facing racial injustice. Their mission is built on the Ferguson National Demands, which call for the elimination of discrimination and police brutality and support in employment and housing for oppressed people in the US. These demands also address the school to prison pipeline: mass incarceration of people of color, and other demands regarding racial issues which are plaguing American society.

Asians 4 Black Lives primarily focuses on solving the problems which exist within African American communities because it believes that finding justice for these communities is the foundation which liberation for other minority groups can be built upon. Its activism includes blockading Home Depot in response to the Emeryville Police Department's murder of Yuvette Henderson, and protesting in front of the Oakland Federal Building and the Oakland Police Department. It has also initiated action to build houses for impoverished people. In addition, it is involved in the work of groups such as the Blackout Collective, #BlackBrunch, and the Onyx Organizing Committee among many others.

Asians 4 Black Lives is also working with Letters for Black Lives in a combined effort to root out “anti-blackness” (the notion that African Americans are inferior) in communities. Its goal is to encourage members of older and younger generations to have discussions about issues which are related to racism and discrimination.

STOP ANTI-ASIAN RACISM & CHINA BASHING RALLY at Chinatown Archway in Washington DC on March 2021

Stop Asian Hate rallies

Main article: Stop Asian Hate

Movements like "Wash the Hate," "Hate is a Virus," "Take Out Hate," and the non-profit organization Stop AAPI Hate were created in order to support Asians who were attacked during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The slogan "Stop Asian Hate" was frequently used in February 2021 and the usage of it became more popular due to an increase in the number of attacks which were committed against elderly Asian-Americans, like the killing of Vicha Ratanapakdee, which occurred one month earlier. Asian American celebrities like Daniel Dae Kim, Chrissy Teigen, Olivia Munn and others condemned these attacks. Later, the usage of the slogan "Stop Asian Hate" became more popular, particularly after the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings in mid-March and later, the usage of it continued to become more popular, particularly after more acts of violence were committed against Asians in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City.

Asian American studies

See Us Unite

See Us Unite is an activist movement which is designed to educate the public on Asian American history, increase cross-cultural solidarity with the AAPI community, and "amplify voices as we unite to change people’s perception about what it means to be an American." This campaign highlights historical and modern inequities including violence against Asian American women, anti-Asian discrimination, and Asian American stereotypes. See Us Unite has launched a video campaign that seeks to bring attention to issues important to the AAPI community. These videos include informational segments on the Chinese Exclusion Act, Sammie Ablaza Wills, prejudices against Sikh Americans, and more.

The May 19 Project is social media campaign designed to highlight cross-cultural solidarity between the AAPI and African American communities. May 19 is the shared birthday of Malcolm X and Yuri Kochiyama.

Characteristics of contemporary Asian American activism

Participation in Social Media

Since many Asian Americans are immigrants from Asia or have family living in Asia, it is more common for activists to use foreign social media platforms such as China's WeChat and Weibo, Korea's KakaoTalk, and Japan's LINE and Mixi, rather than American platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to engage in discussions and organize protests.

For example, during the February 2016 protests against Peter Liang's conviction of manslaughter for the shooting of Akai Gurley, Chinese Americans organized rallies primarily through WeChat. Participants in these protests often shared information to their close friends via private "friend groups" on WeChat, and this allowed Chinese Americans to easily relay up-to-date information to their relatives in China and around the world.

Additional notable Asian American activist movements

Asian Americans have participated in a variety of movements and protests, including:

• 2001-2003 protests against the Patriot Act, NSEERS, and anti-Muslim policies after the September 11 attacks
• A 1000 people counter-protest across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the outcome of the 2014 Shooting of Akai Gurley, in which the Chinese-American community considered Officer Peter Liang to have been scapegoated for the black man's shooting in an alleged attempt at appeasement. The counter-protest was a result of white officers in similar cases having been exonerated while Liang was with the full penalties of the law, suggesting that his indictment may have been unfair.
• The Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College lawsuit
• The 2016 social media campaigns to increase representation of Asian Americans in Hollywood, including the use of Twitter hashtags #StarringJohnCho and #StarringConstanceWu
• Andrew Yang 2020 presidential campaign
• Opposition to Donald Trump in the 2016 United States Presidential Election

List of associated concerned groups

• Third World Liberation Front
• Japanese American Citizens League
• Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action
• Korean American Coalition
• Asian American Political Alliance at UC Berkeley
• Gidra Newspaper at UCLA
• Philippine-American College Endeavor at SFSU
• Asian American Studies Conference
• Hate is a Virus
• Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition of three organizations
• United Peace Collaborative
• Asian American Action Fund
• Asians in America
• They Can't Burn Us All
• Asians With Attitudes
• Soar Over Hate
• Asians Are Strong
• Dragon Combat Club
• Seniors Fight Back

List of notable activists

Larry Itliong

Larry Itiliong (October 25, 1913 - February 8, 1977) was a key figure in Civil Rights Era activism for the Asian American community, especially for people of Philippine descent. Filipino activism, largely fueled by the Delano Grape Strike, in the United States corresponded to worldwide "Third-World" national liberation movements, and Itiliong formed the United Farm Workers of America alongside Philip Vera Cruz. Born in the Philippines, in 1913, Itilong moved to the United States in 1929 and joined his first strike in 1930. Itiliong had a sustained history of leadership in the unionization of workers, he started for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, he served as secretary of the Filipino Community of Stockton, then founded the Filipino Farm Labor Union, and was eventually leading the AFL–CIO union Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.

Yuri Kochiyama

Yuri Kochiyama (May 19, 1921 – June 1, 2014) was a Japanese-American political activist who advocated for social justice and human rights movements, specifically during the Civil Rights Era. In 1943, Kochiyama and her family were sent to a concentration camp in Arkansas, for two years as a result of discriminatory World War Two policy in the United States. The internment of Japanese Americans resulted in the relocation and restriction of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific Coast, and fueled Kochyiama to fight for human rights, specifically for Asian Americans. The painful experiences of her internment, coupled with her father’s death made Kochiyama aware of governmental abuses the violations of human rights that have been experienced by minority groups in the United States. Kochiyama’s activism started in Harlem in the early 1960s, where she participated in the Asian American, Black, and Third World movements for civil and human rights, ethnic studies, and against the war in Vietnam. She also supported movements involving organizations such as the Young Lords and the Harlem Community for Self Defense. Kochiyama helped found the organization Asian Americans for Action, and linked her activism to the more political Asian American movement. Kochiyama would continue to fight for movements including the struggle for Black liberation, Puerto Rican Independence, and communist revolutionary movements in Peru.

See also: Key figures of the Asian American Movement

• Eqbal Ahmad
• Guy Aoki
• Grace Lee Boggs
• Helen Zia
• Cecilia Chung
• Vijay Gupta
• Yuji Ichioka
• Fred Korematsu
• Corky Lee
• Helie Lee
• Marie Myung-Ok Lee
• Ai-jen Poo
• Sonalee Rashatwar
• Michelle Rhee
• Shakira Sison
• Thenmozhi Soundararajan
• George Takei
• Simon Tam
• Haunani-Kay Trask
• Velma Veloria
• Evelyn Yoshimura
• Judy Yung
• Cathy Park Hong
• Gil Mangaoang
• Kiyoshi Kuromiya