As a social justice organization, we find ourselves constantly responding to the injustices that our community faces every day. There are moments, however, when the tide shifts—when something extraordinary happens, and we catch a glimpse of what’s possible when we organize and imagine beyond the confines of survival.
This is more than a political victory. It’s a milestone in our ongoing story of return and renewal. Fifty years after war scattered us across the world, we are still here—planting roots, reclaiming space, and reimagining what freedom can look like.
SEAFN’s Communications Director, Binh Ly, and Development Director, Nancy Vue Tran, both longtime organizers, reflect on this political moment and the local organizing that it took to get us here.
Binh Ly, SEAFN Communications Director
When Zohran Mamdani was elected as New York City’s first Muslim and Socialist Democrat mayor, I felt a surge of unbound possibilities I hadn’t known in years. In twelve short months, so much became imaginable—a city guided by a vision rooted in working-class lives, building power from the ground up, and drawing on the energy and determination of young people.
“I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.”
Listening to Mamdani describe the working class—“fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns: these are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater”—I thought of us. I thought of the thousands of Southeast Asian families in NYC who sewed patterns in our apartments, toiled in factories in New Jersey, hunched over to do nails, or scrubbed offices in Midtown—families like mine. With Mamdani’s election, a part of us—of our hands, our labor, our story—was finally acknowledged in the halls of power.
My mind drifts to my childhood, growing up in the Bronx under Giuliani. I remember how our community, like so many Black and Brown folks, was singled out by the police—how we were forced into menial jobs just to qualify for meager welfare checks. I remember aunties and uncles feeling the sting of being criminalized: for selling papaya salad in Jerome Park, for sewing bows in our apartments. How quickly a simple act of care or survival could be cast as a crime.
Despite the injustices, we organized and resisted to demand dignity for our community. Along with many other Vietnamese and Khmer youth, I joined the Youth Leadership Project of CAAAV when I was 14, in the 1990s. Together, we organized around welfare rights, better housing conditions, more jobs, and against police brutality. We also built alliances with groups like DRUM in Queens to strengthen organizing within our respective communities. This collective work among working-class immigrants laid the foundation for powerful grassroots movements—building the infrastructure and leadership that eventually propelled Mamdani to power in 2025.
Our collective organizing work is the long arc that makes this moment possible—a moment where our government will be led by someone like Mamdani. We are able to elect leaders who truly care—who see public safety as rooted in empathy, dignity, and relationships, and who make sure our basic needs, like rent, food, and childcare, are met with compassion. Local government is where these changes feel real; it’s where policy touches our everyday lives and our organizing efforts make the biggest impact. As of this writing, the federal government was attempting to cut SNAP benefits for 42 million Americans along with Head Start and many other programs. As federal support becomes less dependable, local government matters tremendously. As we keep fighting, let’s give ourselves permission to dream big and believe that rapid, unimaginable change is within our reach.
This sense of possibility only grows when I think about the election of Kaohly Her—the first woman and the first Hmong mayor in St. Paul, home to one of the largest Hmong communities in this country. St. Paul has long been a place of refuge and rebuilding for Hmong families; many resettled there after the U.S. war in Southeast Asia. Her’s story resonates with so many of us—arriving as a refugee, organizing for Hmong women, carrying the wisdom and weight of her community into public service. Her victory marks not just political change, but a healing of histories, a reclaiming of space.
Nancy Vue Tran, SEAFN Development Director
As a first-generation Hmong woman and St. Paul resident and parent, this moment feels like both a personal and collective homecoming. This year marks the 50th anniversary since the end of the U.S. wars in Southeast Asia—the very events that uprooted our families and brought us to the United States. For many of us, St. Paul became the heart of our rebuilding—a place where Hmong refugees found safety, raised families, and slowly turned survival into belonging.
To see Kaohly Her become the first woman and first Hmong mayor of St. Paul feels profoundly healing. It’s more than representation—it’s the closing of a circle our elders began half a century ago. I’ve come to know Kaohly through mutual aid spaces such as Building More with Philanthropy (BMPP), a giving circle where she has always led with integrity and care. Even before she held public office, she was already serving her community—raising resources, advocating for women, and building bridges across differences. Her leadership has always reflected the heart of our people: grounded, relational, and deeply committed to collective well-being.
I hold on to the power of our shared story. Kaohly’s journey—from refugee child to public servant—echoes the path of so many Hmong families who transformed loss into leadership. I celebrate the generations of Hmong women whose labor made this victory possible—the mothers who worked night shifts, the aunties who helped with childcare, the daughters who translated and organized so their families could be seen. This moment belongs to them.
I celebrate that in a city shaped by Hmong hands and hearts, we now have leadership that reflects our stories and our dreams. For our elders, it is affirmation. For our youth, it is possibility.
I hope that Kaohly’s win sparks a deeper belief in what’s possible for our people. That our communities—especially young Hmong girls and Southeast Asian youth—see themselves reflected in her story and feel called to lead in their own way. I look forward to a day where children whose parents have been uprooted and deported will be reunited. The re-traumatizing of Southeast Asians who are here because the U.S. was there is the ultimate failure of our resettlement process. I hope that philanthropy and institutions begin to follow Kaohly’s example: leading with care, centering lived experience, and investing in communities that have always been here, quietly sustaining the fabric of this state.