Category: Statements

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On this Day of Service

We at WWS know that many of you are feeling scared, drained, and at a loss on how to help. In response to the murders of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026, Keith Porter by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles on December 31, 2025, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez by an ICE agent in Chicago on September 12, 2025, and the more than 20 people killed in ICE detention in 2025 alone, WWS has put together a short list of resources on how to get involved. 

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s memory and message, we encourage you to take a few minutes today to look over our list and find a couple of places to donate to, volunteer with, or follow.  

You can also find a list of resources specific to Los Angeles at our statement on ICE from June 2025. 

Places to Donate:

GoFundMe for Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, the man killed by an ICE agent in Chicago, Illinois on September 12, 2025: https://www.gofundme.com/f/silverio-villegas-gonzalez

GoFundMe for Keith Porter, the man killed by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles, California on New Year’s Eve: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-for-keiths-daughters-after-tragedy

GoFundMe for Renee Nicole Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 7, 2026, is now closed, but you canl visit the site to read her wife’s statement: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-for-renee-goods-wife-and-son

Minneapolis Rapid Response: 

Monarca: https://monarcamn.org

612-441-2881 

Immigrant Defense Network: https://immigrantdefensenetwork.org/

612-255-3112

Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee: https://www.miracmn.com

miracmn@gmail.com

Minneapolis Mutual Aid:

linktr.ee/mplsmutualaid?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=e71e5788-ab78-4ca7-ab75-a1629f459d10

Los Angeles Rapid Response: 

NDLON: https://ndlon.org/

(626) 799-3566

CHIRLA: https://www.chirla.org

888-624-4752

Órale: https://www.orale.org

(562) 245-9575

DSA-LA: https://www.instagram.com/dsa_la

Los Angeles Mutual Aid:

https://mutualaidla.org/

Reading List:

“On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” award winning poem by Renee Nicole Good: https://poets.org/2020-on-learning-to-dissect-fetal-pigs

“My Minnesotans Fear Ice” by Minnesotan poet/activist Bao Phi: https://time.com/7345628/anti-ice-minneapolis-minnesota-protests-fear

“An Elegy for My Neighbor, Renee Nicole Good” by poet Danez Smith: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a69957102/elegy-for-renee-nicole-good/

“Renee Nicole Good’s Award-Winning Poem: Read Excerpt” by Mandy Taheri: https://www.newsweek.com/renee-nicole-goods-award-winning-poem-read-in-full-11336593

Instagram Statements & Reflections:

“Statement on Recent ICE Murders of Community Members” from California Faculty Association: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTTMO_qAafQ/?img_index=2

Thoughts from Rajiv Mohabir, poet and professor, who selected “On Learning Dissecting Fetal Pigs” for the ODU undergraduate poetry prize in 2020: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTO04M6DDAA/?img_index=1&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D

On the importance of community gatherings from Bay Area musician, A1: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTTcV9Ukm1y/

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Women Who Submit Stands with Palestinian Authors: A Response to the LA Public Library’s Decision to Cancel an Event with Jenan Matari and Nora Lester Murad

In response to the LA Public Library’s decision to cancel an event during Read Palestine Week (the original LA Reporter article can be read here), we at Women Who Submit (WWS) have worked together to write the following statement in solidarity with the Palestinian and Jewish authors whose author talks were redacted from the program without explanation.

Women Who Submit, our members, authors, and affiliates, support and uplift diversity and equity in our storytelling, programming, and actions. Our organization was founded with the intention to promote women and non-binary people to tell their truths in writing. In a society that too often amplifies white Christian heteronormative stories to promote a homogenous American lie, WWS especially aims to uplift underrepresented voices to promote complex and compassionate visions of humanity. 

We do not agree with the LA Public Library’s decision to cancel the Read Palestine Week event featuring Jenan Matari, author of Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden and Nora Lester Murad, author of Ida in the Middle. The silencing of these Palestinian authors, especially when the Palestinian people are actively experiencing a genocide by the Israeli government is wrong. From “Women Who Submit joins the Palestinian-led Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel”published in June 2025: “For over 600 days, the Israeli Occupation Forces have decimated Gaza’s schools, universities, and libraries, attacking the nerve centers of Palestinian knowledge and culture. They have assassinated over 200 journalists, 115 civil defense workers, and over 1,200 healthcare workers…Along with the crime of genocide, the IOF have committed domicide (the destruction of homes), scholasticide (the destruction of schools) and epistemicide (the destruction of archives, libraries and other sites of knowledge production).” 

In a world where the Palestinian people are actively being murdered in their homeland, we consider this an act of racism, anti-Palestinian sentiment, and censorship. 

In Los Angeles, we demand the freedom of libraries to remain public spaces where individuals may access institutional resources, knowledge hubs, and programs from a variety of sources, including those that contend with and center the voices and perspectives of communities the Trump Administration continues to target. As Supreme Court of the United States attacks libraries and creates an uncertain environment for federal funding sources for libraries as centers of knowledge, it becomes all the more important for public institutions not to concede to ostentatious displays of power. 

As the Los Angeles Central Library celebrates its centennial in 2026, “Dedicated in July 1926, the Los Angeles Central Library became an instant architectural icon and guiding light of learning for the city,” we remind the Central Library that to remove this event is not only contradictory to its mission to be a “guiding light of learning,” but is an act of cowardice.

Women Who Submit stands by those who need assistance in uplifting their narrative. We do not tolerate censorship of any kind. We stand by the Palestinian and Jewish authors who were denied the opportunity to tell their narratives at the Los Angeles Library as literary advocates and as a literary organization whose members encompass women and nonbinary people of the global majority. We will not allow for these voices to be silenced.

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WWS Statement from Los Angeles on the Disappeared and Nationwide Human Rights Violations

A daytime street scene of a community march against ICE raids. A woman holds a young child in the foreground.

Most of us never learned about los desaparecidos from Central America in school, how throughout the 1980s in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, American supported militaries disappeared priests, nuns, whole villages who opposed them. Now, four decades later, as vibrant jacarandas bloom purple across the Southland, our cities have become vulnerable to these same United States Federal forces.

As communities resiliently recover from this winter’s devastating fires, as students wrap up the accomplishments of another school year and walk across stages, our friends, neighbors, and family are being pulled from our streets and classrooms, from car washes and fields. As the ongoing genocide in Gaza continues to unfold, our screens have become overwhelmed with images of violence in our streets, schools, and workplaces. 

Women Who Submit stands in unwavering support of our vulnerable Latinx communities and all those being racially profiled by these illegal deportation actions. We stand shoulder to shoulder with these Black and Brown communities and all those being treated inhumanely. We call for the immediate release of those callously disappeared from our neighborhoods and families. Women Who Submit opposes the existence of ICE and the presence of the National Guard and military troops in our city. The presence of these forces legitimizes the illegal and cruel efforts of ICE and escalates violence against those engaged in civil disobedience and other forms of protest.

It is Trump, ICE, Border Patrol and the US military bringing violence and chaos to the people of Los Angeles and of the Americas.

We urge our community to take action. We acknowledge the unique and varied ways people are able to push back and urge you to connect to local efforts in your area. If you have the wherewithal to push back financially, here are some funds and resources to pass along. 

Vecinos Unidos Whittier: Whittier advocates for how to support our immigrant communities

Centro CSO: Grassroots organization based in Boyle Heights

JailSupportLA raises funds to support jailed protestors (Venmo: JailSupportLA)

Clue Justice has a detained immigrant bond fund

GoFundMe for three siblings affected by detention

GoFundMe to bring Diego back to his family

Immigrant Defenders Law Center

Central American Resource Center

Haitian Bridge Alliance

There are growing opportunities for direct action as well. As we head into this summer, we urge you to lean into the community and resist fascism as it rears its head in all of our communities. 

https://www.chirla.org/donatenow/  Organization to advance the human and civil rights of immigrants and refugees. 

https://www.idepsca.org/programs Day labor support

http://stopicealerta.ddns.net/ Report and receive updates on ICE sightings and terror

https://ndlon.org/ National Day Labor Network

https://www.ccijustice.org/carrn find your local rapid response network

https://www.advancingjustice-aajc.orgAsian Americans Advancing Justice

https://ajsocal.org Asian Americans Advancing Justice So Cal

https://www.aclunc.org/home  ACLU Northern California

https://action.aclu.org/give/now ACLU National

https://www.maldef.org Legal support 

Finally, for those in our community personally affected by these raids and acts of terror, know that Women Who Submit supports you, your families, and your loved ones. We see your struggle, and we fight with you. 

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Women Who Submit uplifts and affirms Asian American and Pacific Islander voices

by Women Who Submit Leadership Team
Cover image from the media toolkit for Asian American Day of Action.

Xiaojie Tan
Daoyou Feng
Soon Chung Park
Hyun Jung Grant
Suncha Kim
Yong Ae Yue
Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez
Paul Andre Michels

Rest in power.

Another act of white supremacist misogynist violence has torn a hole in the world.

Again, women who should be living, loving, creating, eating, laughing, hugging their families, working, writing, resting, women who should still be here to live their cherished and beloved lives, are gone.

Again, the institution of policing extends its empathy to a man who acted out of white entitlement.

Again, those in power throw around insulting excuses. “A bad day.” “Sexual temptation.”

Again, a white-centered media tries to gaslight us by hesitating to call the gunmen’s murder of eight people, seven of them women, six of them Asian women, as anything other than white supremacist and misogynist. 

Again, Women Who Submit mourns the lives of the women whose lives were cruelly cut short by a man who viewed them as disposable, a man who was cushioned and encouraged by a system that confirmed those views and abetted his actions.

WWS members are AAPI. We are mothers and grandmothers. We are workers. Immigrants. The children of immigrants. We reject a world where women of color are expected to live in fear of their lives being severed at the hands of a violent white person. We reject surveillance and policing “solutions” that only increase harm done to Black, brown and indigenous communities. These responses only increase the harm done to AAPI women and all women of color already made vulnerable by jobs that demand enormous emotional labor with scarce protection in return: hospitality, personal care, sex work. Our hearts are with the loved ones of Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, and Paul Andre Michels. We reject their erasure. We affirm their irreplaceable humanity.

We know that no words can bring them back and make the world whole again. We know that this is not the first act of violence towards Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, that this violence is older than the United States, and has increased dramatically over the past year, and that denouncing the pattern of racism, harassment and assault is not enough. Declarations are not enough. They must be paired with action. We encourage all of our readers to take action with us.

We want to amplify the voices of those in our literary community who celebrate AAPI life and resist white supremacy culture. Please join us in showing love and gratitude to these organizations:

Kaya Press

Kundiman

EastWest Players

Asian American Writers’ Workshop

Asian American Literary Review

Arkipelago Books

Bamboo Ridge Press

Hyphen Magazine

Hmong American Writers’ Circle

We believe words can be a balm and a fire. We have deep love and respect for these writers and we hope you will let their words ignite you to demand transformative change:

Sex Work is Care Work by Jean Chen Ho

A Letter to My Fellow Asian Women Whose Hearts are Still Breaking by R.O. Kwon

The Atlanta Shooting is Another Reminder that the Police are Not Our Friends by Steph Cha

Sundress Publications Interview with WWS Member Muriel Leung, by Julie Leung

Anti-Asian Violence must be a bigger part of America’s racial discourse, a conversation between Alexander Chee and Cathy Park Hong

They Pretend to Be Us While Pretending We Don’t Exist by Jenny Zhang

We encourage everyone to follow and support these organizations that advance justice for Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

Stop AAPI Hate

Red Canary Song

Asian Americans Advancing Justice

Tsuru for Solidarity

Japanese Americans for Justice

We will continue working for a world that uplifts the dignity and humanity of AAPI women.

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WWS for Black Lives Matter

A neutral tone fence in front of a construction site and a yellow construction vehicle. "Black Lives Matter" is spray painted across the fence in red, with "BLM" in black.

Written by Ryane Nicole Granados, Edited by Lauren Eggert-Crowe, and Resources by Ashley Perez

It is with a heavy heart that we find ourselves in a position, once again, to draft a statement in support of Black lives and to denounce police brutality, while reaffirming our commitment to fighting anti-Black racism. We know members of our community are tired. The exhaustion is a soul deep weariness from a lifetime of saying name after name of those murdered in the name of hate. 

The ongoing, tragic killings of unarmed Black men and women, including most recently, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade have continued to expose our society as a system built to oppress and harm Black people while perpetuating white supremacy.

As a result, Women Who Submit stands in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Some of our members are Black mothers and daughters and spouses and artists and educators and activists, and their very existence in a world determined to deny them their humanity is revolutionary. We recognize their revolution. 

One action we can take immediately is to make our solidarity visible through our art, activism and our voices. If you are protesting, let us know and we will spread the word. If you are writing, let us encourage you to submit because your words matter. If you are tired, let us help you carry on because the more of us who mobilize, the greater our impact will be. 

Black writers’ lives matter. Black readers’ lives matter. Black children’s lives matter. Black women’s lives matter. All Black lives matter, now and always.

We believe in a world that values community over policing. We want to build a society that invests in education, housing, healthcare and the arts, not an ever-expanding and dominating police presence. We lend our time and energy to the work of building a network of resources that nourish the community and uplift Black lives.

Resistance is a collection of small and grand acts by people who care. Women Who Submit leadership and membership are resisting by attending protests, donating to organizations that support Black lives, making calls to legislators, demanding independent prosecutions in unlawful killings and supporting bailout efforts for protestors. Below is a list of organizations that need your dollars, and as we search for additional ways to help bolster the fight, we also share the following collection of works and resources that we have found helpful in these troubling times.

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak–Audre Lorde

Black Lives Matter

Roxane Gay: Remember, No One is Coming to Save Us

Teachers Must Hold Themselves Accountable for Dismantling Racial Oppression

Black Lives Matter: A Playlist of Powerful StoryCorps Interviews

Ways to help Black Lives Matter

Directory of Community Bail Funds

Black Visions Collective

Campaign Zero

Reclaim The Block

Mental Health Resources for Black Folx:

Other Mental Health Resources:

Work for Non-Black People of Color and White folxs to do:

 

Tips on Resistance Beyond Protesting & Thoughts on Protest:

 

Anti-Racist Education Resources:

 

Actions to Take:

 

Support Black Owned Business:

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WWS statement against the Trump Administration’s racist immigration policy

Three signs above Highway 101 in Los Angeles, Union Station in the background. The signs read, "Separate Powers, Not Families," "We belong together, fam" and "Families belong together"

by the Women Who Submit Leadership Team

People in power always find a way to accuse the underserved of not being worthy of justice.

Women Who Submit was founded in response to male editors looking to justify the paucity of women authors in their publications. Those editors made excuses: women weren’t submitting enough, weren’t working hard enough, the submissions from women simply weren’t good enough. We were told it was our own fault that every Tier 1 journal in the nation disproportionately published more men.

We learned how to recognize the rhetorical acrobatics of the privileged.

Now, powerful white men (and women!) tell us that immigrants and refugees aren’t following the rules, aren’t working hard enough, aren’t “getting in line,” and aren’t worthy of citizenship (as if being born in this country means you are somehow better than). We are told they deserve to have their young children ripped from their arms and taken to detention centers several states away. We are told they deserve deportation. We are told that their families aren’t worth preserving. We have always heard this. Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, and all people of color have always been told by U.S. policies and institutions that their contributions mean less, that they are expendable. We are all told to fear Black and Brown voices, instead of respecting and amplifying them.

There can be no literary justice without immigration justice. There can be no gender parity in publishing without racial justice. Breaking down submission barriers is not enough if border walls still stand, if prison walls still stand. How many rapturous, beautiful, soul-searing poems is the world being deprived of, because of racism and xenophobia? How many refugee children have dreams of growing up to be novelists or journalists, and are told, by our national policies and our shameful cultural attitudes, “You aren’t worth our time”?

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