The Oakland Nail Salon Project

A series of parties dedicated to connecting African American clients with Vietnamse nail salon workers. We watched our short film "Journey to the Nail Salon" and debriefed the film to bridge our cultural and language barriers. Thank you Envy Nails for hosting the first of our party series!

Watch the movie here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzE76vcFGl0

At our last core meeting, we talked about work place discrimination at the intersection of gender and sexualities. We watched this awesome video dissect the fluidity of our identities!

Before we went onto the streets, we started May Day with a teach-in about the labor movement and worker rights! This was the first time Vietnamese, Bhutanese, and Nepali workers took the streets alongside other immigrant and refugee working communities.

We're marching on the streets of Oakland with our Community Health for Asian Americans (CHAA) family this SUNDAY for May Day!

We deserve to be treated with respect and dignity in our workplaces.

May 1st marks International Worker’s Day! At Community Health for Asian Americans (CHAA), our immigrant and refugee narratives are a big part of where we work. We are nail salon workers, restaurant workers, nannies, airport workers, taxi drivers, and more. Regardless of where we come from, we deserve to be treated with respect and dignity in our workplace.

We invite you to join us on May 1st to learn about the hxstory of the labor movement and empower our communities to take action. As a collective CHAA is doing an interactive program from 11AM-12PM to give hxstorical context of this significant day for our communities. We are also taking part in the 24 hours of action begins with 12:00PM rally at the Fruitvale BART station followed by the 1:00PM march to San Antonio park. Please see the flyers for more details and help share with your networks!

What: Immigration and Work: Our Narratives
Who: Asian and Pacific Islander Immigrants and Refugee workers
When: May 1st, 11AM - 2:0PM
Where: Fruitvale Bart (11AM-1PM) San Antonio Park (2PM)

Communities members will have opportunity to engage in t shirts making activities as a creative way to share their stories and visibility. *T shirts are limited and will be on a first come first serve basis*

A community lunch will be provided at San Antonio Park after the march (2PM). We will be taking lots of pictures and recording people resilient stories, so please fill out the attached media form. Bring your families, friends, neighbors and love ones. It will be a beautiful day!

Sincerely,

CHAA's Healthy Equity Team

WHY ARE WE MARCHING?
UPHOLD WORKER AND STUDENT RIGHTS
We demand respect for all workers’ rights: living wages and employee benefits, and an end to labor
trafficking and wage theft. We demand empowering and free education, including ethnic studies
programs, and for campus Graduate Student Workers to earn fair wages.
LEGALIZATION FOR ALL UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANTS, IMMEDIATE END TO DEPORTATIONS
We demand a clear path to legalization for all and an end to deportations and detentions. Regardless of
skill, background, history of criminalization, sexuality, or gender identity, all migrants and their families
have the right to freedom of movement and to live together in dignity.
SUPPORT THE STRUGGLE OF BLACK COMMUNITIES AGAINST STATE VIOLENCE IN THE U.S.
We march for Black Lives, Black Power, and Black Resistance. We support Black-led struggles against
state violence and for self-determination. We stand with trans people of color against state violence.
BRING OUR LOVED ONES HOME FROM PRISONS, JAILS, AND DETENTION CENTERS
We march against all forms of state violence, including those inherent to systems of policing,
imprisonment, and surveillance that primarily target Black, Brown, and poor communities. We march for
the freedom of our loved ones locked in cages and for the families of those killed by the police.
BUILD AND DEFEND STRONG AND HEALTHY COMMUNITIES
We demand access to meaningful work, guaranteed and comfortable housing, free and sustainable
healthcare, and environmentally sustainable communities. We demand real solutions to reverse the
effects of climate change that endanger us all globally but especially poor people and people of color.
END U.S. MILITARY AGGRESSION & CAPITALIST POLICIES THAT FORCE MIGRATION
More than 200 million people have been forced to leave their country of origin because of war,
environmental degradation and unequal trade policies. We say: No More! End US military aid. End US
imperialism and support for colonial governments.

A vision for a thriving nail salon industry

We are Wal Mart workers, restaurant workers, refugees, and nail salon workers sharing our community support for AB2437. Passed in B&P! Thank you to our author Assemblymember Phil Ting.

Visiting Sacramento today with Asian Americans Advancing Justice for the very first hearing of our bill!

This past weekend, our team represented East Oakland Building Healthy Communities at the California Endowment Convening in LA with Anupama Chapagain Denisha M. DeLane and Tam Ho!

We're excited by all the overwhelming support we're getting for AB2437: The Nail Salon Education and Fair Competition Act! Thank you community partners and allies.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus (Co-Sponsor)
Community Health for Asian Americans (CHAA) (Co-Sponsor)

Allen Temple Health & Social Services
APALI - Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute
API Legal Outreach
Asian American Women's Artist A Place of Her Own
Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA)
Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)
Asian Prisoner Support Committee
Bay Area Nepali Women OrganizationEast Bay Refugee Forum (EBRF)
Bet Tzedek - The House of Justice
Chinese Progressive Association
CLEAN Carwash Campaign
Filipino Advocates for Justice
Filipino Migrant News
Girls Inc. of Alameda County
Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA)
National Employment Law Project
National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF)
Nepali Association of Northern California
New York New Jersey Regional Joint Board, Workers United
Korean Community Center of the East Bay (KCCEB)
Oakland Unified School District Refugee and Asylum Program
SCC Wage Theft Coalition
The Spot Oakland Youth Center
Street Level Health Project
UCLA Labor Center
VietUnity

Our political journey is about connecting to all issues that impact marginalized Asian and Pacific Islanders. Last week, we visited San Quentin State Prison to talk to the ROOTS participants inside. We connected on immigration and economic opportunities.

Our member Le Lam talked about her refugee journey to America: she lost her husband and daughters at sea, and had to rebuild her home in Oakland as a single mom with two sons. While working in the nail industry, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, twice. Since then, she's been raising her voice and power to speak up for justice in her Vietnamese community.

Her survival mentality is to appreciate the privileges one is given and persevere to move on. For her family and community. What a great opportunity it was to connect our stories about immigration, refuge, and work.

Thank you for the radical welcome, ROOTS!

To learn more about the ROOTS program at Asian Prisoner Support Committee, click here: http://www.asianprisonersupport.com/blog/

Hello Friends and Supporters,

We’re excited: there’s a big opportunity in California to improve working conditions in the nail salon industry!

Community Health for Asian American’s (CHAA) and Asian Americans Advancing Justice request your support for AB2437: The Nail Salon Fair Compensation and Competition Act (Ting).

The nail salon worker leaders and staff at CHAA have been organizing with the Oakland Nail Salon Community for almost five years now and AB2437 begins to address some of the most important issues they’ve identified through their community engagement. The bill will provide culturally and linguistically competent education and outreach regarding wage and hour laws to nail salon worker and owners. Please see the attached fact sheet for more details.

We need your support now!
AB 2437 is now scheduled for the following legislative hearings that you are invited to attend:

Assembly Business & Professions
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
9:30 a.m. - State Capitol, Rm. 4202

Should the bill be voted out of Asm. B&P, then AB 2437 will then be heard:
Assembly Labor Committee
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
1:30 p.m. - State Capitol, Rm. 447

Let us know if you can make it to either of these hearings.
Please send in your letter of endorsement by Wednesday 4/13 at 5PM to Andrew Medina at [email protected] and Tracy Nguyen at [email protected]. For a template letter of support as well as a fact sheet describing the bill, please email Tracy Nguyen at [email protected]. We ask that you make a few additions to the letter in the highlighted areas and put it on your organizational letterhead. Please digitally sign the email or sign, scan and email.

Thank you so much for your support!