So much of the language we have around activism is militaristic, but if our struggle is going to last, it must center the relational ties that have sustained our communities from the very beginning.

I am a 1.5 generation Hmong American who spent nearly thirty years of my life in southeastern Wisconsin. The memories of racial aggressions I experienced during those years have not escaped me. When I was a young boy in Fond du Lac, someone vandalized our garage door with racially charged graffiti. Another time, I went over to a white friend’s house and his grandmother kept referring to me as “brown boy”.