What is the Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Festival?
The largest East Coast festival celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander identity and culture.
Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans (CAPA)
The Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans (CAPA) is a New York-based advocacy organization dedicated to addressing the community needs of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. Our goal is to build partnerships with community organizers as we help social profit organizations reach new audiences. CAPA’s goals are to:
- promote cooperation and understanding among Asian American and Pacific Islander and among their respective organizations
- foster friendship among Asian American and Pacific Islanders and others in the community
- promote, represent, and advocate the interests of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities
- provide a conducive environment for encouraging Asian American and Pacific Islander to utilize their history, culture, and art to foster self-esteem and respect for their heritage
For 30 years, the Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans (CAPA) has been at the forefront of creating and sustaining personalized opportunities for nonprofits, businesses, artists, and individuals to explore our shared culture.
The CAPA Network and Essential
The CAPA Network includes 80+ nonprofits, businesses, and community organizations. Diverse in size, population, and programmatic emphasis, CAPA partners serve to organize a voice for Asian American and Pacific Islanders.
Originally, CAPA was formed under the leadership of the Basement Workshop, OCA, Amauan Workshop, National Federation of Indian American Associations (NFIA), and the Pencak Silat Stick Fighting Association.
CAPA welcomes everyone who is interested in AAPI affairs to join, regardless of age, sex, race, or ethnicity. Bringing in non-Asian AAPIs into the CAPA is essential as it helps foster better understanding with the local community. It also helps the AAPI community become part of mainstream America without losing its identity.
Founders Story: Basement Workshop
Basement Workshop was started by a group of fellow urban planners and artists in 1971 on Elizabeth St. in New York Chinatown. It began with projects such as the Asian American Resource Center, which compiled information on Asian American communities, a magazine named Bridge, which was widely read, and a cultural publication called “Yellow Pearl.”
The Basement started to seek funding, at first from cultural funders, and grew quickly. Basement was very loose and different artists pursued different interests, but they saw their art in the context of their communties. In 1973 Amerasia Creative Arts formed, which worked collectively on projects, programs and workshops. They shared and taught each other. They contributed to community issues by providing publicity materials, graphics and posters. One night, they screened 2,000 posters for a community wide demonstration against police brutality at City Hall. They did oral histories of senior citizens and to begin an old photograph collection. They also taught ESL and Citizenship classes, an afterschool Arts and Crafts program for forty children and a Neighborhood Youth Corps program in the summer with a staff of twelve youth workers administrating the program.
Growth Outside of Chinatown
Basement organized a literature program and supported the Morita Dance Company. The Center for Educational Equity began under Basement. This center organized projects around questions of race, sex and class, including a girls’ video project at the local junior high school.
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Festival
In 1979, the Basement began to develop its activities outside of Chinatown, primarily supporting Asian American artists. They began a gallery that would hold a citywide show a year. It grew from from a handful of tables and a few performers. That first year, musicians and artists who joined us included people from Basement such as:
- “The Heat” with Geoff Lee
- Teddi Yoshikami
- Margaret Yuen’s dance troupe
The Basement Workshop endured until the late 1980’s but it eventually had to shut its doors because of the difficulties of maintaining an ethnic arts organization. Out of it came Asian American arts organizations that continued today including the New York Chinatown Museum and the Asian American Dance Theater. Artists like the Joanne Miyamoto, Frank Chin, and Jessica Haggedorn began their work at Basement. Out of its sweat and tears grew much of the Asian American arts community in New York.
OCA
In 1973, OCA catalyzed into being with the vision of uniting Chinese Americans across the United States into one representative voice. Interest and concern had been stirring in different pockets of the country since the late 1980s. The movement started to grow as numbers of the Chinese American communities began to rally together.
With this vision and strong determination, in September 1971, K. L. Wang and others established the Chinese American Leadership Council, the precursor to OCA, in Washington, DC. K.L. Wang then personally traveled through many cities in the U.S. to promote a national advocacy organization for Chinese Americans.
Today, there are over 80 OCA chapters and affiliates across the country working on behalf of Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent as an organization dedicated to advancing the social, political and economic well-being of Asian Pacific Americans in the United States.
Federation of Indian American
We worked orginally with The Federation of Indian American which soon thereafter became the The National Federation of Indian American Associations (NFIA), an umbrella organization of various other associations in the United States. Since 1980, the NFIA has worked to protect the civil rights of the community and helped preserved the best of rich cultural heritage of India as well as project a positive image of India and the Indian American community in the US. It has become the voice of the community in representing Indian Americans to the political corridors not only in Washington, DC and but also to the other State capitals.
With the theme, “Building on the Past, Shaping the Future,” the event will provide NFIA member associations the opportunity to reflect on its 25 years of service to the Indian American community and to chart out a course of action for the future. “It will be our grand celebration,” noted Rajen Anand, the NFIA president, “but we will also take a critical look at our past activities, honor the pioneers of NFIA, and will identify the challenges facing the community, in order to ease their life in the United State.”