CAA is working to ensure that internet access is treated as a public necessity—no different from water, power, or transit—so that all communities can thrive in the digital age. In 2024, we released San Francisco’s Digital Deserts: How San Francisco Chinatown and Other Neighborhoods Are Left Behind in the Digital Divide, the first report to reveal how the city’s digital divide leaves low-income Chinese families and neighborhood businesses behind. We found that nearly half of Chinatown households (44%) lack broadband internet and families living in single room occupancy dwellings face especially unreliable connections. Without the internet, many Chinatown businesses cannot process cashless payments, which undermines the entire neighborhood economy.

By making these inequities visible, CAA galvanized policymakers and partners to act. Our advocacy, alongside community allies, led the California Public Utilities Commission to award  $32 million in broadband infrastructure grants to Bay Area cities—$10 million of which will go to underserved neighborhoods including Chinatown, the Tenderloin, and Bayview-Hunters Point. 

While the 2024 national election’s results devastated us, they confirmed: we will fight for one another as we always have. In San Francisco, CAA galvanized our community with the 2024 CAA Voter Guide that helped voters make informed decisions on city and state-wide measures. In the run-up to the city election, we hosted candidate forums for individuals running for positions on the San Francisco Board of Education, as well as the San Francisco Supervisor role for District 3. 

Our community prevailed on all the ballot measure positions we took — like passing funds for schools, housing, and hospitals, protecting reproductive rights, and reducing taxes for small businesses that make our neighborhoods special. These local victories keep us steadfast in our fight for a just, collective, multi-racial democratic future.

As China faced an economic downturn, a record number of Chinese migrants sought safety and opportunity by crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Like many others, more than 24,000 Chinese migrants took the treacherous 60-mile journey through the Darien Gap confronting death and disease before continuing north. With few organizations able to provide Chinese migrants with in-language assistance, the Haitian Bridge Alliance called on CAA to support these new arrivals. Over the past year, our staff made several trips to the San Diego border, providing direct support to Chinese asylum seekers in their transition. 

Listening to their stories reminded us that the movement of people has always been shaped by war, economic crises, and increasingly, climate change. Yet today, migration itself is being weaponized. The right-wing leaders and media attempted to spread false claims that China is “sending military-aged men” across the border. These baseless attacks are designed to incite fear and division in an election year. In response, CAA’s Chinese Digital Engagement team acted swiftly to debunk disinformation in real time on WeChat and other Chinese-language platforms, ensuring that the truth shaped the narrative.

With our partners in San Francisco’s Language Access Network (LAN), CAA passed critical amendments to the Language Access Ordinance, strengthening the city’s commitment to providing vital information and services in multiple languages. These amendments lowered the City’s official language threshold from 10,000 to 6,000, making Vietnamese, along with Chinese, Spanish, and Tagalog, an official certified language for the first time! Together, we enshrined the universal right to be served in the language you are most comfortable with, and codified access to telephonic interpretation and written translation.

At CAA, our mission centers on building community through shared culture and collective history. Guided by a deep commitment to preserving the unique character of San Francisco’s Chinatown, we are proud to be one of six founding organizations at the helm of Chinatown Media and Arts Collaborative (CMAC).

One of CMAC’s signature initiatives, Edge on the Square, stands as a groundbreaking cultural space that resists the displacement of local creatives by providing material and cultural resources to Chinatown’s artists and audiences. In 2024, Edge on the Square supported 150+ BIPOC artists and activists, whose visionary work drew over 25,000 visitors to the space and neighboring small businesses.

Because CAA believes that no one should be denied their voice solely because of their immigration status, we fight for noncitizens’ right to vote on local and state civic measures. In 2023, CAA and the Immigrant Parent Voting Collaborative secured a landmark victory by winning immigrant parent voting rights in San Francisco. This win paved the way for Orange County, where Measure DD in Santa Ana advanced noncitizen voting. With CAA’s support, the Santa Ana for Fair Elections campaign affirmed the principle that immigrants who live, work, and pay taxes deserve representation in City Hall.

At the state level, CAA launched the California Local Voting Coalition to confront the political exclusion of 15.1% of California’s voting-age noncitizen residents. The coalition includes the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, SIREN: Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network, VietRise, UP Pasadena, GO Public Schools Oakland, National Immigration Project, and Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment. Together, the coalition advanced immigrant voting by supporting California localities in learning more about advancing this right.  

In 2024, our Economic Justice and Immigrants Rights programs worked one-on-one with hundreds of community members to help them obtain green cards, naturalize as U.S. citizens, access work and education opportunities. Many of these community members are Chinese immigrants building better lives for their families. From finding relevant job listings to acting as language interpreters at job interviews, our team supported our clients every step of the way to help them take next steps toward opportunity and stability.

During the 2024 U.S. elections, the rampant spread of disinformation—exacerbated by moderation rollbacks on social media platforms and A.I.-generated falsehoods—targeted voters of color, immigrants, and women candidates like Kamala Harris. Through our Chinese Digital Engagement program, which includes our Chinese-language fact-checking site PiYaoBa, CAA documented and debunked 628 major pieces of disinformation over the past year, which together amassed 11.6 million views. We shared our research and discoveries in our report: “Conspiracy Theories, Lies & A.I.: How right-wing disinformation in the Chinese American community reflected the politics of hate in the 2024 election.” 

As one of the founders of Stop AAPI Hate, CAA continues to anchor the crucial work of documenting acts of anti-Asian racism nationwide and addressing their root causes through policy, advocacy, research, and strategic communications work. By engaging with political leaders, allied organizations, and everyday people, Stop AAPI Hate continues to advance policy change, publish critical data and research, challenge harmful misconceptions about our communities, and activate everyday people to help create a world where every person has the chance to thrive.

2024 marked the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case Lau v. Nichols, which expanded rights for students with limited English proficiency and established their right to bilingual education. We invited students, parents, teachers, and other local stakeholders for a 1-day community convening to commemorate this historic moment, reflect on continued gaps for multilingual learners and families, and share opportunities for continued advocacy. To commemorate the occasion, CAA published a zine called “Language is My Superpower” with the students of San Francisco Unified School District. Their art and poetry on the history of Lau v. Nichols made its way into classrooms all over the country!

Recognizing the need for long-term movement infrastructure in AAPI social justice spaces, CAA founded Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality (AACRE) in 2014. Today, AACRE is a network composed of 11 East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islander organizations working across a range of critical issues. As the organizations comprising AACRE have grown their programming, so has AACRE grown its capacity to support the organizations across their infrastructural, cultural, and team-centric needs. Today, more than 150 staff work in the AACRE network towards a vision of shared liberation and justice.