“Together we are powerful”: Building Chinese solidarity with Indigenous struggle

“When I say ‘Tuánjié,’ you say ‘Lìliàng Dà’!” 

The rally MCs led this emphatic chant at the Chinatown community council and rally on May 25, 2023, and throughout the campaign to push back on the luxury condo development being proposed for 105 Keefer Street in Vancouver’s Chinatown. 

The first part of the chant, “Tuánjié,” in Mandarin, means “coming together in unity or in solidarity,” and the latter portion, “Lìliàng Dà,” literally translates to “big strength.” Not unlike other movement building, Tuánjié Lìliàng Dà or “together we are powerful” has become central to the theory of change in organizing to combat rapidly increasing gentrification, displacement, and racism in Chinatown. 

I became a part of the housing justice movement in Chinatown in 2016 during the 105 Keefer campaign. At the time, I was organizing with the Chinatown Concern Group, an intergenerational grassroots organization that pushes back on rampant gentrification and racism in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Since then, although Chinatown Concern Group no longer exists, many of the youth organizers and seniors have continued working together to fight for the rights of low-income and precariously housed residents in the area.  

[Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua] warn, “Left unaddressed [in anti-racism theory] is the way in which people of color in settler formations are settlers on stolen lands. It ignores the complex relationships people of color have with settler projects. Although marginalized, at particular historical moments they may have been complicit with ongoing land theft and colonial domination of [Indigenous] peoples.”

What we have learned in all these years of organizing alongside low-income Chinese seniors and migrants as well as precariously housed tenants in the neighbouring Downtown Eastside (DTES) is that organizing for collective power means understanding the interconnectedness of our struggles. The work becomes finding ways to bridge the historical divide caused by ongoing colonial violence that manifests through white supremacist racism, material scarcity, and lateral violence. We thus began a journey to learn to align our anti-gentrification and anti-racism struggle with Indigenous struggles.

This decolonial solidarity work is paramount and necessary. In their seminal article, Decolonizing Antiracism, scholars Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua highlight a crucial point: if we practise anti-racism without decolonization, our efforts can unintentionally support ongoing settler-colonial policies and structures.

They warn, “Left unaddressed [in anti-racism theory] is the way in which people of color in settler formations are settlers on stolen lands. It ignores the complex relationships people of color have with settler projects. Although marginalized, at particular historical moments they may have been complicit with ongoing land theft and colonial domination of [Indigenous] peoples.”

When fighting against anti-Asian racism and for migrant rights, if we don’t connect our work to the principles of decolonization, often we end up leaning on a colonial immigration system that depends on the erasure of Indigenous peoples, while also buying into the misleading idea of the model minority and the false promise of upward mobility. The Canadian citizenship test, for example, perpetuates this colonial mindset by requiring citizenship applicants to study the colonial history of Canada rather than the Indigenous history. Decolonization cannot be just a symbolic gesture or a mere metaphor; it’s essential for building a truly anti-racist community. 

One senior admitted that she hadn’t thought our voices would be heard. She thought, as immigrants, we should just keep our heads down and not make any trouble. But being a part of this campaign, she learned that we need to talk about injustice that’s happening to us and that we are powerful when we are united.

However, as many communities are feeling the urgency of this solidarity work, it can sometimes seem challenging to know how to even start. Here I want to share the journey that I and other organizers in Chinatown have been on and some lessons that we have learned along the way. The work that we have started in Vancouver’s Chinatown is nowhere near perfect and still in its beginning stages, but it’s a start to generating collective learning. 

The fight for 105 Keefer Street

Low-income Chinatown residents and Chinese youth activists began organizing to save 105 Keefer Street from the proposed condo development in 2012. The fight came about due to concerns that the proposed condo would lead to the displacement of low-income residents and change the character of Chinatown. Late Chinatown activist Godfrey Tang saw this gentrification process as a process of “replacing Chinatown with another culture.” 

After five years of intergenerational organizing and mobilizing support from all over the city, in 2017 the campaign had a historic win when the development licence was rejected by the city’s own development permit board. 

At our debriefing meeting after this victory, our seniors shared their reflections. One senior admitted that she hadn’t thought our voices would be heard. She thought, as immigrants, we should just keep our heads down and not make any trouble. But being a part of this campaign, she learned that we need to talk about injustice that’s happening to us and that we are powerful when we are united. Another senior also shared that before joining this campaign, she felt isolated in this city. She felt a certain hostility between Chinese and Indigenous community members, but seeing how her Indigenous neighbours and other people came out to lend support, she said she doesn’t feel alone anymore and that Chinese residents need to build friendships with and fight alongside Indigenous people. 

For every city council hearing or development permit board meeting, we had to fight hard for the city to provide proper language access. The youth organizers would many times act as interpreters at these functions, and once we were even scolded by a development permit board member who told us we were being “rude.” Because of translation needs, our seniors also automatically had less time to speak in the hearing than other people.

The 105 Keefer campaign was also the beginning of our collective journey to learn to decolonize our organizing and find ways to build Chinese and Indigenous solidarity. What we have learned is that this journey is twofold: on one hand, as immigrants to this place we need to empower ourselves as agents of change; and on the other, we need to question our relationship to the colonial Canadian state and reorient toward Indigenous people. 

Together, we need to reimagine Chinatown not simply as an ethnic enclave, but as a place of safety, mutual support, and community. It is essential to recognize that Chinatown's history is one that has always been shared by Japanese, Black, Indigenous, and working-class labourers, as well as other marginalized people.

This means so many things. We have to re-establish our intergenerational relationship between elders and youth and how to meaningfully engage with each other and exchange knowledge. Together, we need to reimagine Chinatown not simply as an ethnic enclave, but as a place of safety, mutual support, and community. It is essential to recognize that Chinatown's history is one that has always been shared by Japanese, Black, Indigenous, and working-class labourers, as well as other marginalized people.

To translate this into practice, we have done different things over the years. First, we developed practices and created spaces in our meetings to encourage discussions and decision-making that foster a community of resistance and care. In 2017, after two years of teatime discussions and home visits, seniors and youth organizers created the People’s Vision, outlining a strategy for Chinatown’s social and economic development that prioritizes marginalized voices. During the 105 Keefer Street campaign, we conducted power analyses to ensure that our vision remained comprehensive and tackled the systemic issues central to our struggle, guiding where to apply the pressure of our collective power. Second, we found that language is a central component to this process.

Language accessibility

Language accessibility was one of the biggest struggles when we engaged in city processes. For every city council hearing or development permit board meeting, we had to fight hard for the city to provide proper language access. The youth organizers would many times act as interpreters at these functions, and once we were even scolded by a development permit board member who told us we were being “rude.” Because of translation needs, our seniors also automatically had less time to speak in the hearing than other people. This lack of language access at the city level reveals the racist foundation on which Vancouver is built. As the Tyee reported after talking to Chinatown residents in 2023 when the 105 Keefer project was once again brought before the development permit board, “The lack of Chinese language support for a Chinatown project was a major barrier to understanding what was happening in their own neighbourhood.” Even with this barrier, I witnessed our seniors and youth take up every space possible to speak loudly in their own languages demanding justice from the city. At every city hearing, development permit board meeting, and demonstration, seniors would take the mic and voice their demands for accessible housing in Chinatown. 

In our own organizing space, all our gatherings were held in Cantonese and Mandarin with whisper interpretation available to people who needed translation. Once seniors were able to speak in their own languages, they became more comfortable speaking up and having meaningful dialogues. The youth organizers helped translate the land acknowledgement into Mandarin and Cantonese and began to introduce the practice of reading the land acknowledgements out loud together at the beginning of all our meetings. The meaning of the land acknowledgement becomes even more direct in Chinese, as the translation for “unceded territories” becomes as literal as “the land that has been taken without agreement.” We wanted to do this to generate discussion about Chinatown being on unceded Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh land referred to by the Squamish name Luq’Luq’i, loosely translated as “grove of beautiful maples.” 

We began this practice not only as a necessary protocol but also to anchor our meetings and collective decisions while allowing space for questions and discussions. Initially, we didn’t hear any comments from the seniors about it.

One day in 2018, during a regular biweekly meeting after we read the territorial acknowledgement, a senior raised her hand and asked, “What does it mean to say Chinatown is on land taken without consent from Indigenous people?” She further inquired, “Does this mean that Chinatown doesn’t belong to Chinese people, but rather we occupy land that was taken from others?” This prompted a conversation about the history of the land Chinatown occupies, covering its formation and including the history of Hogan’s Alley – a neighbourhood with a concentrated Black community which was razed in the name of urban renewal. The seniors mainly listened and their receptiveness, to me, spoke to the trust we had built between us. 

We then moved on to our meeting agenda, which included an item about responding to the city regarding temporary modular housing being built at the edge of Chinatown. The same senior spoke up again, “If Chinatown is on Indigenous land, shouldn’t we talk to Indigenous folks about this? Who are we to make this decision? If this project is meant to prioritize housing for Indigenous people, then we have a responsibility to support it.” 

Despite many seeing Chinese seniors as a helpless population dependent on social services or steeped in conservative mindsets and unable to change their views, these seniors are showing up as active agents of change and building their collective power and solidarity. 

Seeing a senior who has lived in and depended on the Chinatown community to open up the possibility for solidarity with and respect for Indigenous leadership was impactful. Through our conversations, we realized Chinese seniors weren’t disengaging from Indigenous or other social movements because they were apathetic but because they weren’t even being given a chance to engage. They faced language barriers, unfamiliarity with the issues, and racial trauma. Once we were able to support them through interpretation, create spaces for ongoing conversation, and empower them to find their voices, they were able to better engage in this work.

Beyond silos

We started taking the seniors to attend important Indigenous-led actions and events. One that we have consistently gone to for a few years now is the annual Women’s Memorial March held in the DTES in which Chinatown is located and brings attention to one of the central issues facing Indigenous people: missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and gender-diverse people.

Before the marches, we hold cultural safety sessions with the seniors which cover Indigenous history and struggle in parallel with Chinese immigration history and struggle. Then at the marches, through interpretation equipment, we share the community guidelines, speeches, chants, and signs, and incorporate stories and histories of different places as the marches progress through the neighbourhood. After, seniors share their reflections and have expressed their desire to learn more. One of the seniors laments, “Canada is supposed to be a safer place, but Indigenous rights are still being violated. We need to support them to change this situation together.”

From this, we began to set up workshops for elders to discuss topics such as capitalism, dehumanization, the housing crisis, harm reduction, and understanding colonialism in Canada. These types of learning opportunities have often been inaccessible to Chinese seniors. In a workshop on how capitalism functions, we gave a simple example of a salad factory owner – a few of our seniors worked in a salad factory – spending a certain amount of money on materials and another amount to pay his workers. At that moment, one senior raised her hand and remarked that if you were Chinese you would get paid less than the amount used in our example. Another senior remarked that women sometimes do work that isn’t even compensated. At that moment, I felt foolish for thinking that we need to educate our seniors in such a way. Our seniors didn’t need lectures on how capitalism works as they understand and experience capitalist and racist exploration from living it daily and have resisted in their own way. They may not always have the same political language, but this doesn’t mean they don’t or can’t engage in this type of political discussion. What they need, as we all do, is to have a place to discuss, to reflect, and to name their experiences. 

Building solidarity

I take a lot of inspiration from Chinese-American activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs, who often emphasizes that it is important for us not to think of marginalized communities as just an “oppressed mass” but as people who are able to reflect and take up “political and social responsibility.” Despite many seeing Chinese seniors as a helpless population dependent on social services or steeped in conservative mindsets and unable to change their views, these seniors are showing up as active agents of change and building their collective power and solidarity. 

In May 2023, six years after our victory at 105 Keefer Street, the developer, Beedie Living, won a B.C. Supreme Court decision requiring the development permit board to reconsider their application. Within three weeks, the Chinatown community, DTES residents, organizers, and allies mobilized hundreds of people. For seven days, Chinese seniors and youth went door to door, informing low-income tenants about the action. Together, we held a community council at 105 Keefer Street, where we voted against the development plan and in favor of 100 per cent social housing, demonstrating to the city that we cannot be erased. As we’ve always done in Chinatown, we continue to create safe spaces for one another.

Through this struggle, we have embraced community building and collective care while learning to deepen our relationship with Indigenous residents. Our organizers shared stories of the support they felt from residents, including a grandma who offered them fruit. It was evident that residents feel a responsibility to fight for a Chinatown as a place for working-class residents and precariously housed tenants. 

Although the developer was able to obtain the development licence this time, we don’t take it as a defeat and continue to grow our capacity for solidarity. Currently, we are building infrastructure for a language school that will prepare Chinese youth organizers for the language ability and interpretation skills that are needed to bring the communities together, and tailoring it to organizing in this particular community. Our fight continues and we will do it united and not divided. 

As one senior, Mrs. Ma, who has been involved in organizing for the past decade has maintained to myself and others many a time: in Chinatown there are many different people – Chinese immigrants, drug users, sex workers, Indigenous people – and no matter who a person is, they all deserve housing.