This year marks the 250th year of the United States. For SEAFN, it means that our task is to continue the fight for justice and liberation.
Over the past two years, Pheng and I have traveled to the South, mostly Mississippi and Alabama, with the guidance of our friend Noel Didla from the Deep South Solidarity Fund. These journeys were more than educational, they were also transformative. They were not simply learning trips; they were political pilgrimages. We walked in the footsteps of Black freedom fighters whose courage, strategy, and love transformed the course of history. We witnessed that the movement for Black liberation is not confined to the past; it is alive in communities that continue to organize, dream, and build toward freedom. We walked the ground where generations of Black organizers, freedom fighters, and everyday people built movements that reshaped the world. We came to understand that the Civil Rights Movement is not simply history. It is a living legacy that continues to teach us how to organize, resist, and imagine liberation.
If we are to know Jackson, Mississippi, we must understand that the struggle for civil rights did not end with landmark victories. Jackson teaches us that Black communities continue to build power, practice self-determination, and create democratic futures in the face of ongoing racism, economic exploitation, and state violence. These lessons challenge us to ask what solidarity requires of Southeast Asian communities today.
Last year marked the 50th commemoration of the end of the U.S. wars in Southeast Asia. We recognize that our story is part of a much longer arc of global struggle. Our communities survived genocide, forced migration, and displacement, but survival alone is not our horizon. Our calling is to participate in the ongoing work of collective liberation.
At the end of June, Pheng, Kabzuag Vaj, and I were invited to Accra, Ghana, for the Repairing International Development Conference. Standing on this Western side of the African continent, we felt the presence of ancestors whose lives and resistance continue to shape our movements today. We were reminded that the histories of enslavement, colonialism, war, displacement, migration, and imperialism are deeply intertwined and so too are our futures. Across oceans and generations, we are connected by a shared responsibility to repair what empire has broken and to cultivate the worlds our ancestors imagined but were denied. We honored the ancestors whose resistance made our movements possible and witnessed the enduring leadership of African communities imagining new futures rooted in repair, dignity, and collective liberation.
Last year marked the 50th commemoration of the end of the U.S. wars in Southeast Asia. We recognize that our story is part of a much longer arc of global struggle. Our communities survived genocide, forced migration, and displacement, but survival alone is not our horizon. Our calling is to participate in the ongoing work of collective liberation.
Through the work of the “long arc” and our commitment to building toward the next seven generations, SEAFN is deepening its practice of solidarity by embracing a pro-Black political vision. This means more than standing with Black communities in moments of crisis. It means actively challenging anti-Blackness within our own communities, investing in Black leadership, building enduring Black and Southeast Asian relationships, and recognizing that our collective future depends on the freedom, safety, and flourishing of Black people.
Our commitment is clear: Black lives matter. It is not a slogan, but a guiding principle. We believe there is no Southeast Asian liberation without Black liberation. We are committed to helping build a world where Black people are free to live, thrive, lead, and dream, knowing that when Black communities are liberated, all of our communities move closer to collective freedom.
For SEAFN, building toward the next seven generations requires us to root ourselves in a politics that is unapologetically pro-Black. We understand that anti-Blackness is foundational to the systems that have displaced, exploited, and divided our peoples. Dismantling those systems requires more than solidarity in moments of crisis; it requires transforming ourselves, our communities, and our institutions.
To be pro-Black is to recognize Black movements as visionary architects of the futures we seek. It means learning from Black feminist organizers, abolitionists, cultural workers, healers, and movement builders who have continually expanded what freedom can mean. It means confronting anti-Blackness within Southeast Asian communities while investing in relationships grounded in trust, accountability, and shared struggle. It means understanding that solidarity is not charity, but a practice of mutual transformation.
We reject a future where any people are disposable. We commit ourselves to building a world beyond empire, borders, cages, and extraction, a world where communities determine their own futures, where care replaces punishment, where land and resources are stewarded collectively, and where every generation inherits greater freedom than the one before.
This is the horizon we choose.
A horizon where Black life is cherished, protected, and celebrated.
A horizon where Southeast Asian communities stand not at the margins of history, but alongside Black, Indigenous, and other peoples building a new world.
A horizon rooted in repair, radical love, and collective power.
This is our commitment for the next seven generations.
What is your generational work? Join us at UNITI Fest in MN in 2027!