Executive Director + Co-Founder
Executive Director + Co-Founder
Executive Director + Co-Founder
APEX Express
APEX Express is a weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Asian Americans from all corners of our communities. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, djs, and activists and airs each week on KPFA 94.1FM.
APEX Express is committed to building a broader social movement for justice and collective liberation for all oppressed people, including poor & working-class people, people of color, women and queer people. We support grassroots organizing and cultural work that advance these goals, and see APEX as a space for building consciousness and promoting critical discussion about these efforts.
As part of KPFA, we are committed to promoting independent community media that is free and accessible to everyone.
We work collectively to share our skills and resources, and to build the capacity and confidence of community members to tell their own stories. Within our group, we prioritize maintaining a culture of mutual support, respect, and love.
HISTORY
APEX Express was founded in August of 2001. Gina Hotta rallied a small group of folks to start an Asian Pacific Islander radio show on Pacifica Radio Station, KPFA 94.1 FM. In the 1990s she was part of Inside Eastside, the original API show on KPFA.
Gina Hotta, Eric Park, Pratap Chatterjee, Renee Geesler, and Nishat Kurwa worked hard to bring APEX Express to you every week. Through the years, producers came in and out of APEX, yet Gina Hotta stayed strong as the main coordinator for the show.
On September 28, 2009 Gina Hotta passed away of a heart attack. She is our “Mama G,” as we would often call her. She was a mentor for many and a pioneer for making space and airwaves available for at least one hour a week for the voices speaking about Asian American issues and events. Her legacy lives on.
AACRE
Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality is a network committed to social justice. There are currently nine organizations within the AACRE Network.
APEX Express is a weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of the community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, djs, and activists and airs on Thursday at 7 p.m. on KPFA 94.1FM.
Asian Prisoner Support Committee works with Asian and Pacific Islander prisoners to educate the broader community about the growing number of APIs in the U.S. being imprisoned, detained, and deported.
The Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, works to educate, organize, and empower the Bay Area South Asian communities to end violence, oppression, racism and exploitation within and against diverse communities.
Asian Pacific Islander Equality – Northern California advocates and organizes for fairness and equality in the Asian and Pacific Islander and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer communities.
Chinese for Affirmative Action aims to protect the civil and political rights of Chinese Americans and to advance multiracial democracy in the United States. CAA advocates for systemic change that protects immigrant rights, promotes language diversity, and remedies racial injustice.
Hmong Innovating Politics is a grassroots organization whose mission is to strengthen the political power of Hmong and disenfranchised communities through innovative civic engagement and strategic grassroots mobilization.
Hyphen is a news and culture magazine that tells the stories of Asian America, beyond identity, featuring emerging artists, thinkers and doers. By documenting and disseminating these stories, Hyphen contributes to the ever-expanding, multifaceted narrative of Asians in America.
Network on Religion and Justice for Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer People is working to nurture and support efforts toward a fully inclusive Asian Pacific Islander faith community.
Visibility Project is a national portrait + video project dedicated to the Queer Asian American Women, Trans, and Gender non-conforming communities, the Visibility Project breaks barriers through powerful imagery and storytelling.
Asian Prisoners Support Committee
The mission of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee (APSC) is to provide support to Asian & Pacific Islander prisoners and educate the broader community about the growing number of Asians & Pacific Islanders in the United States being imprisoned, detained, and deported. We seek to address and challenge root causes of this crisis such as the deterioration of our educational system, the criminalization of our youth, and the lack of access to resources for low-income immigrants and communities.
The Asian & Pacific Islander (API) prisoner population grew by 250% between 1990 and 2000. In Oakland, CA, several API groups had very high arrest rates, including Samoans (who had the highest arrest rate of any racial/ethnic group in the city, 140 per 1,000), Cambodians (63 per 1,000), Laotians (52 per 1,000) and Vietnamese (28 per 1,000). In the California prison system, APIs are officially categorized as “Others,” a fitting description for a population that is so often overlooked.
Founded in 2002, APSC is based in Oakland and works primarily with inmates at San Quentin and Solano state prisons and the reentry population in Alameda County. APSC is the only organization in the nation with a mission to provide culturally competent services and support specifically for the API incarcerated and formerly incarcerated population.
Chinese for Affirmative Action
Chinese for Affirmative Action was founded in 1969 to protect the civil and political rights of Chinese Americans and to advance multiracial democracy in the United States. Today, CAA is a progressive voice in and on behalf of the broader Asian and Pacific American community. We advocate for systemic change that protects immigrant rights, promotes language diversity, and remedies racial injustice.