NAASCon is an organization created by and for students of Asian American descent. NAASCon aims to serve as a forum for AA student activists from across the country to compile resources, coordinate campaigns, and build community around shared values of social and economic justice, human rights, and collective decision-making.

Since 2001, NAASCon has been an active Asian American student political organization with the mission of educating, fostering dialogue, and mobilizing students through proactive campaigns across the country on issues of importance facing the Asian American community. NAASCon has been at the forefront of major Asian American student campaigns including boycotting Abercrombie and Fitch to gaining support for the HR 333 bill that would provide federal funding for institutions of higher education with Asian American populations of 10% or greater. NAASCon also joined activist groups like GAPMINY and Asian Media Watchdog at the protest against Details Magazine.

Most recently, NAASCon joined Asian Media Watch in a campaign against the Jersey Guys who made racially inflammatory remarks toward Asians and Asian Americans on a local radio station. In 2005 NAASCon began the development of our Asian American resource guide for Asian American students including sections on film, music, literature, and speakers. NAASCon has also launched a resource-building campaign for Asian American Studies—compiling the history, resources, and campaign initiatives from students working for Asian American Studies programs and/or resource centers.

NAASCon adopted the label "Asian American" because of its logic and purpose. The logic of personal investment in the term includes a shared history containing both positive experiences such as art, literature, culture, and struggles, as well as negative experiences of discrimination, hate crimes, prejudice, and endless anti-Asian legislation, actions, and stereotypes. The purpose of the label, which was born in struggle, is nothing less than the affirmation of our existence, a collective spirit that represents, both literally and figuratively, social and political power. However, unless we actively acknowledge the often-ignored ethnic groups, narratives and experiences contained under the label of "Asian American," such a label becomes problematic.

NAASCon exists because APA students are not apathetic, because each generation or wave of immigration should not have to face a new set of stereotypes, because we are Americans no matter what anyone says, because campus issues recur everywhere, because we will not be denied our history and identity, because Joseph Ileto was a son and a brother, because Wen Ho Lee spent nine months in solitary confinement, because glass ceilings are meant to be broken, because accents do not equate to inequality, because civil rights are not optional, because the backlash against affirmative action has not ended, because we will not be invisible, because we remember the concentration camps, because we know why we cry - BECAUSE WE CAN. BECAUSE WE MUST.

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NAASCon is an organization created by and for students of Asian American descent. NAASCon aims to serve as a forum for AA student activists from across the country to compile resources, coordinate campaigns, and build community around shared values of social and economic justice, human rights, and collective decision-making.

Since 2001, NAASCon has been an active Asian American student political organization with the mission of educating, fostering dialogue, and mobilizing students through... (read more)