The Next Move: Making the Impossible Possible with Miya Yoshitani

Season 2, Episode 7

A lot has changed in organizing over the last dozen years, but one thing hasn't. The importance of winning. The fact that we know how to win is a secret sauce of our craft. Take it off the table, and I believe our ranks grow even smaller. 

Miya Yoshitani has been organizing for 25 years, winning tangible change within the world as it is, while having an eye toward winning the world as it should be.  

She is the Executive Director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN). 

Since the 1990s, Miya has been at the forefront of the environmental justice movement. I was lucky to sit down with Miya earlier this summer to talk organizing.

Here’s are some of my favorite moments from our conversation.

On finding organizing:

But I think the first time that I knew what I really wanted was to become this thing that we now call being an organizer was when I was in college and I went to my first organizing training. It was a Midwest Academy training. And this was the first time I heard the real story, the organizing story about Rosa Parks. And I learned about organizing strategy for the first time, kind of named that there is such a thing as strategy. That it can be purposeful, it can be intentional, that there's actual skill to it, that it can be learned and shared and replicated and that they're actually tools and technologies that can help us with it.

And this was just a huge revelation to me.

And it also made me pretty angry that the real story about Rosa Parks wasn't about this random act of courage by one person like we're all taught at school, but it's a story of organizing, it's a story of collective action of diversity of tactics. It was the deep preparation and work and relationship building and strategic thinking that went into that moment, and all the tests and innovations on that organizing moment that went into it. I was angry because I couldn't understand why that was removed from history. And it seems really intentional that this myth of the individual is so powerful and so pervasive. And I think we still really struggle with it today, that it made us as a country invisibilize the real story about Rosa Parks, which is a story about the power of organizing.

What she learned from her first canvassing job, while in high school:

I mean, there are fundamentals to this. I would say that was one of my first experiences of an actual methodological approach to organizing. It's like, first rule…be curious. Don't make assumptions about people, always start out by asking people to tell their stories no matter what it is. You want to hear from people about what they think and about what they care about. And I think that has been one of those things inherently built in into my understanding of what works in organizing. I didn't even know that I was doing anything related to organizing, it was really just my summer job. But I feel like that was actually some of the hardest work I ever had to do, and it was actually some of the most important learning for me.

On trusting members to make their own decisions:

I think that one of the biggest lessons about organizing that I have is that sometimes organizers get in the way of where communities and members actually are or want to be. We want to protect them, so we don't ask. We say, "Oh, this is a poor neighborhood, people don't have any money." So we make these assumptions that they're not able to or shouldn't. And it's not just about money, it's also about people's time and asking people to show up for public testimony, for a rally, for a phone bank, all kinds of things. And I think it goes all the way to, as organizers, what goes into our thinking about when we're crafting demands too. Many times our members are like, "No, no, no, we don't want to settle for that. We want the big thing, and we're not going to settle for the compromise. We want Chevron to shut down or whatever it is, they're always asking for the big thing.

And I think as organizers, we have to learn how to get out of the way of our communities and our members' own ambitions. And if we don't actually really listen to what our members are asking for and what their dreams are, then we can actually become a roadblock to those.

On being clear that as organizers we have opinions and influence over it all:

Yeah. It's so important for us not just to have an opinion, but to be transparent about it. Because we always have opinions, and you're always going to have an influence. But if you're acting like you don't, that's disingenuous. I think we should be as transparent as possible about what we think as well. And knowing that our engagement with our members has an impact.

On developing the Principles of Environmental Justice:

It's not just about the rage that we feel because of the inequity, this is not just describing injustice. This is describing what we want, this is what we're fighting for. And I think in any of our movements having something that articulates what we are fighting for, what we're building collective power for, what we want to see and then making meaning out of that, I think is such a huge contribution. And the fact that I got to be a part of that in the early days of the environmental justice movement, it was really a fluke and a coincidence, but it's something that has been such a fundamental part of what I then chose to do every day after. I never would have predicted that.

On the importance of winning:

As long as we're talking fundamentals of organizing, winning is important, winning is good, we need to win things. I think that's one of those super obvious but oftentimes disregarded fact of nature in organizing and just how important it is. And not just to win anything, but win things that bring a better quality of life, they actually address real problems that people are experiencing on a day-to-day level, but probably most importantly that help us build power and help set us up for more transformative demands and campaigns and wins in the future. We're not talking about just going from stop sign to stop sign to stop sign, we're talking about campaign wins that set us up for the bigger wins and not just incrementally but exponentially build our power.

Balancing having an eye toward transformative wins, and delivering in the here and now.

And we're swinging for the rooftops here. We're really I think going for it. And I think that being a part of that is important too. But I also think that as organizers we do have to be creative about how we engage people in the things that are immediate as well. That's part of what the art and science of organizing is. We can't just do one or the other, we can't just choose to only focus on the things that are winnable but that aren't impactful. I think to leave people with the one experience being that they were part of something big that never went anywhere is really disempowering.

On how the fundamentals of organizing can help make those who feel invisible, visible:

I always think of myself as an organizer as really my job is to knock down barriers and to clear the path for frontline communities and leaders to have their voices heard. In communities like the Laotian refugee community that we've been organizing in for years or the Chinese immigrant community in Oakland, Chinatown where we've also built up an organizing base, there are some literal parts of organizing so that people feel heard. And that is like some of the technical things of having interpretation, making sure that people can actually speak for themselves, talk to the media and not have to always have the English speaking spokesperson but actually having our members represent their own views and tell their own stories. That I think is some of the expertise that we've built up around our organizing in making sure that people who normally don't have a voice literally have the capacity to communicate what they want and what their demands are.

Since we spoke, Miya announced she will step down as the director of APEN. You can read her announcement about setting up the next leader of APEN, and her own next move here. 

Listen to this conversation with Miya in its entirety here, or click here for a copy of the full transcript!