Thanks for everyone who participated in my Michael Chang & Maya Lin kids shirt fundraiser/sale, we were able to sell 83 shirts and also received $170 in donations on top of that which translated to being able to donate $1,761.94 to the Asian American Pacific Islander Civil Engagement Fund!
To calculate the donation amount I took the money from shirts plus donations and deducted the costs of shipping and cost of shirts. I paid for packing materials and shirt making supplies myself.
(THANKS FOR SENDING ME PICS WITH YOUR KIDDOS IN SHIRTS!!! I was not prepared for the cuteness!)
This fundraiser got way way bigger than I was expecting. Not Maddiecab big, but still a lot for me! It meant I had to process all this information! Friends and strangers were trusting me with large sums of money! It meant I had to print 83 shirts in my living room! It had been a long time since I had printed that many shirts. And they had two colors! Which means I had to print each shirt twice.
I ended up printing all the Maya Lin shirts one day and the Michael Chang shirts another day. After worrying about it a lot it went really smoothly. I did not order any extra shirts in case some got messed up and they were all printed successfully. Packing all the shirts up and mailing them was probably the most grueling part of the process. My fingers felt so dry at the end of the day, capillary action had drained the moisture out of them. I felt like everyone was glaring at me at the busy post office when it was my turn. But whatever your Zappos return can wait!
some printing candids
I am going to keep this project going though I am uncertain of what it will look like. I do know I want to continue to keep it as a not for profit fundraising endeavor, and I will continue to focus on educating and amplifying my message.
I have a lot of thoughts on my experience with this fundraiser. I had never done a fundraiser by myself and I learned a lot about what works and what doesn't work.
Here are 5 things I wrote down the other day:
- accept help but make sure it's the help you actually need
- don't bend your rules unless you're willing to pay for it yourself
- selling shirts via e-mail is very very inefficient. I was trying not to set up a storefront because of merchant fees but I think it'd be worth it now. (anybody have any advice?)
- if your goal is to not lose money, don't lose money
- try to recognize what you have done and let it nourish you for your next feat.
One big thing I am regretful of is that I feel I was not able to accurately describe why Michael Chang or Maya Lin were important to me. I know I touched upon it but I don't think I quite relayed it. Part of it is I don't write that much anymore and while it is slowly coming back, my writing brain muscle is slightly atrophied. Another part of it is that I have probably never had to explain it to anybody in great depth so I haven't really put it into words before, it has just been a feeling. I've been thinking about it these past couple of weeks and the simplest answer I can give is that these two people made me feel proud and American at the same time.
It has been one month since the shootings in Atlanta. When it happened I read about it that night before getting ready to sleep and I just thought "it's finally happened." I woke up feeling numb and unable to process things. I had been waiting for this to happen for a long time, since the Covid-19 Pandemic began, since people within the Asian community started whispering about a rise in people getting attacked. Suddenly this thing I had been mentally preparing for was happening and I was at a complete loss on how to act or what to do.
Asians getting attacked is not anything new. Last week I drove by a man who made machine gun motions at me. Last year a man spit on my car while he was crossing the street. The first time I got beat up for being Asian I was four years old. Asians getting attacked is not anything new but the media reporting stories of Asians getting attacked is new. People are talking now but it has been extremely difficult finding out news about Asians who were attacked and when those stories were published their race was often not mentioned. I am specifically thinking of the woman who had acid thrown on her face in Brooklyn last year, and the 89 year old woman who got set on fire. Did you hear these stories? (Interesting from what I can tell Yahoo news did the best job?)Since starting this shirt campaign, there have been so many continued reports of violence and hate crimes towards members of the AAPI community. Just look it up, this requires no sharing of links.
Asians getting attacked is not anything new. Seeing the radicalization of so many AAPI people, that is new! It gives me hope. But I worry as our country deals with its other struggles, our white supremacy problem, our police killing black people problem, our child concentration camp problem, our gun problem, our immigration problem, our global warming problem, our healthcare problem, our capitalism problem, the violence and hate on AAPI problem will soon get put on the back burner. It is hard prioritizing problems when all the problems are related.
Last year current NYC Mayoral candidate and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang wrote an article in the Washington Post about how Asian Americans should embrace their "American-ness" to combat Asian hate crimes, to hang a flag up at your home to prove to them that we are American and not Asians. I really can't put into words how angry this article made me. I had heard these words before but for an Asian American person telling me really hurt.
(I also wanted to mention Andrew Yang's response to the Atlanta shootings was proposing more police funding if he were to be elected mayor of NYC. This is the wrong solution.)
AAPI's don't need to hide or change the way they look to feel safe. We will never feel safe as long as we are not free to be ourselves. We need to be visible and proud and elevate shining examples of ourselves so young AAPI's can be proud, not ashamed, of their differences. This week there was an article published where an Irish photographer altered photos of victims of the Cambodian Genocide so that they were smiling. I don't need to explain how horrible this is. The "artist" said he was trying to "humanize" the victims. This incident reminds me of the picture of smiling slaves in my American history book in school.
On June 16, 2017, I put a BLACK LIVES MATTER sign in the large picture window of our house facing the street. I have replaced the letters over the years but it is still there. I had been wanting to put one up for a long time, but I felt uncomfortable doing this in our seemingly apolitical neighborhood. These problems weren't happening HERE! The feelings that welled up in me from the Philando Castille verdict pushed me over the edge. I realized that as the only POC in my neighborhood I had an obligation to put up a sign. It was the LEAST I could do. "Lead by example," says Maya Lin. To not put up a sign could possibly suggest maybe I didn't believe (or care) Black lives mattered. I would never ever want anyone to even wonder if I felt that way.
As I hung up my letters I wondered what people would think of me (and realized I ultimately didn't care) and wondered when/if I would ever be able to take it down. I had an anti-Trump sign up already, I knew when/if I could probably take that down. (I took it down this year after inauguration day!) But when would I be able to take a BLACK LIVES MATTER sign down? I'm still not sure and the end is not in sight. Will my children still be children? Will I be living? Will my children be living?
When I began the AAPI Icons project, I felt the same feeling of frustration, anger, and helplessness. In both those instances, the act of making was my road to action. Cutting out big yellow letters, printing t-shirts. As I started this project I wondered when would I feel it was unnecessary?
I'm pretty sure whatever happens I'll take down my BLACK LIVES MATTER sign & retire this project on the same day.
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