Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ

Growing up, I used to think my family's story ended once they reached the United States. I now understand that displacement does not end the moment someone reaches safety. War follows people, families, and communities across oceans and generations.

When rebuilding doesn¡¯t mean safety 
 

¡°Next stop is 82nd Street - Jackson Heights,¡± the 7 train announcer says.

My entire life, I was born and raised in Jackson Heights, in the borough of Queens, New York,  along the noisy yet nostalgic 7 train.

My community, including in Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, and Corona, is home to generations of immigrants, refugees, and working-class families. My parents, like many Southeast Asian refugees who fled war, rebuilt their lives here alongside communities from Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, Africa, and beyond. Although our cultures were different, many of our families shared similar stories of displacement, sacrifice, and hope for a better future.

After school, I grew up eating tamales sold beneath the 7 train or getting a hot veggie samosa from a local Indian bakery. A Dominican-owned barbershop might sit beside a Thai convenience store. Every block represented a different culture, yet every family seemed to carry a similar determination to rebuild.

As I grew older, I realized rebuilding did not always mean safety.

I watched police officers line Roosevelt Avenue waiting to confiscate the carts of immigrant street vendors. I watched parents trying to make an honest living suddenly become targets of enforcement while their children cried beside them. 

For many families in my neighborhood, survival meant constantly navigating systems that viewed them with suspicion rather than with dignity.

When witnessing was no longer enough 

That same feeling followed me into school. I was often one of the only Asian American students in my classroom. At times I was bullied for looking different, but I was also surrounded by classmates whose families had their own stories of migration, racism, poverty, and resilience. Many of us understood what it meant to grow up carrying burdens our parents hoped we would never inherit.

Schools are supposed to be places of safety. Yet from a young age, my classmates and I practiced lockdown drills. We were taught how to hide from an active shooter before we were old enough to understand why and every morning, I walked through metal detectors before entering school. My peers and I grew up with shootings in our own neighborhoods, including incidents at the same train station I would use to commute to school. 

Then came my first year of high school. In October 2019, I lost a classmate to gun violence. His name was Aamir Griffin and he was killed while playing basketball after a gang member mistook him for someone else. 

The days following his death, I felt the sadness and pain in the room even if we didn¡¯t know Aamir personally, it was tragic watching someone our age lose his life at such a young age. It was no longer just a headline or story on the news but a lived reality impacting all of us. 

Community solidarity in action

I began to understand that the cycle of violence my parents escaped had not disappeared. It had simply changed form. 

During the pandemic, Jackson Heights became one of the first epicenters. News outlets showed body bags being loaded into refrigerated trucks outside Elmhurst Hospital only blocks from where I grew up. For me, those images revealed how communities like mine, immigrant communities of color, were often the first to suffer and the last to receive support. 

Our safety, our health, our education, our needs were being overlooked. That was when I knew I wanted to do more than witness it. I wanted to organize to change it.  

During the peak of the pandemic, I began organizing at the age of 14. I first became involved with the Minkwon Center, working alongside immigrant residents to mobilize community members to testify at hearings, advocate against displacement and gentrification, and ensure they still had a voice in decisions affecting their neighborhoods.

Through the New York Civil Liberties Union, I organized with young people to protect immigrant students, invest in underserved schools, and challenge the school-to-prison pipeline. My work expanded through Amnesty International USA, where I organize for refugee and migrant rights, and Mekong NYC, where I organize to increase civic engagement within the Southeast Asian refugee communities across the Bronx and New York City.

Working with families whose histories mirror my own has reminded me that the legacy of war still impacts our communities today, and that we need spaces for community building, healing, and empowerment.

Protecting human life and rights 

As my organizing grew, I realized that many challenges facing my community were connected to larger global systems shaped by conflict, displacement, and inequality.

In 2024, I first entered the United Nations during the Summit of the Future Action Days as a Youth Delegate with the United Nations Association of the USA (Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵA-USA). 

Walking through the halls of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ, attending youth-led sessions on humanitarian action, disarmament, and a peace future for all, I learned how I can take a bigger role in taking action globally. 

As a Kennedy Human Rights John Lewis Young Leader, I launched Sanctuary Beyond War, a youth-led initiative with Amnesty International USA, Legacies of War, and Nuclear Age Peace Foundation exploring the connections between humanitarian disarmament, forced displacement, and refugee protection.

I began advocating for a broader understanding of peace, one that recognizes that the consequences of war do not end when the fighting stops. War, weapons, and armed conflict force families to flee, and their consequences continue in refugee camps, immigration systems, and landscapes still contaminated by unexploded ordnance.

Today, I continue this work as the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ International Representative for the Migration Youth and Children Platform, bringing a diaspora perspective into peacebuilding. My work has shown me that migration and disarmament are not separate movements, they are both about protecting human life, dignity, and the right to live free from violence.
 

Reinventing the legacy of war 

It has been 51 years since the war and bombings in Southeast Asia. Communities in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia still live with unexploded ordnance, Agent Orange, and intergenerational trauma. And currently over 16,000 Southeast Asian refugees are at risk of deportation and many have experienced family separation. 

We must stop treating migration and disarmament as separate issues. For many diaspora communities, the war never truly ended. It simply changed form and impacts our everyday life. 

As Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Member States, agencies as well as civil society build a more peaceful world, they must recognize young people not simply as beneficiaries, but as partners, especially young people from refugee, migrant, and diaspora communities.

My parents crossed an ocean searching for peace. My generation must ensure peace continues in the lives of those who inherit war long after the world has moved on.
 

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