DONATION LINKS FOR TRUSTED National & local API MOVEMENT ORGANIZING AGAINST ANTI-ASIAN VIOLENCE (list Will evolve as new info emerges with priority for local organizing asks)

If reading this Year of the Water Rabbit/Cat Zodiac resonates or brings you comfort, or solace, could you donate to API trusted movement orgs and invite others to join you? this list is FAR from comprehensive as API movement is leader-full. But, it’s a head start for the work before us. Healing the flow of wealth/wai/water to be a force for good and deepen commitment to our collective safety is powerful energy to show up with this year.

• GoFundMe for Monterrey Park survivors and families

• Amplify RJ, LA

• Compassion In SGV

• The Korean American Coalition Los Angeles

• Chinatown Community For Equitable Development

• Southeast Asian Community Alliance Los Angeles

• Little Tokyo Service Center

• Chinatown Service Center

• Asian Prisoner Support Committee

• Muslims for Just Futures

• AAPI Women Lead

• Khmer Girls in Action

• Vigilant Love

• Empowering Pacific Islander Communities

• Grassroots Asians Rising

• Southeast Asian Freedom Network

• 18MR

• AAPI FORCE-EF

• New Breath Foundation, The New Breath Foundation offers hope, healing, and new beginnings for Asian American, Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander (AANHPI) new immigrants and refugees, people impacted by incarceration and deportation, and survivors of violence.

• Emergent Fund You can also directly grow open, accessible, no-strings-attached organizing dollars for frontline movement orgs when they need us. We will listen careful and follow local frontline leadership. Flexible rapid response funding is critical to give our communities space to grieve, resist urgency, and meaningfully organize alongside directly impacted families for whenever they are ready.

YEAR OF THE WATER CAT/RABBIT

| A MOVEMENT ZODIAC-INSPIRED MEDITATION

*author’s note in box below to learn more about why cat and rabbit are often spoken of together.

OUR CUTE BELOVED FRIEND — THE WATER CAT — IS THE NOBLE MODERN DAY DESCENDANT OF FIERCE RICE HARVEST PROTECTORS FENDING OFF GREEDY RATS FROM STEALING OUR HARD-EARNED LIFE-GIVING FOOD STORES.

Have you ever come across a curious, cuddly bodega cat? This is the vibe of the chill Water Cat. Like their rabbit siblings in the animal kingdom, people can underestimate or project timidity on cats because of their adorableness. But, our adored feline is a sensitive, beautiful soul with profound capacity for compassion and empathy. And, famous for their easy go-with-the-flow, aloof-yet-cuddly, and charismatic presence. Sometimes forgotten, they are major contributors to ensuring our collective prosperity for the future to come. Water Cats take to heart extremely seriously their sacred and celestial role in stewarding shared abundance and protecting our collective resources. I bet you that if you polled a roomful of organizers, it’s not surprising to find a vocal chorus of cat adorers who find kindred spirits in their furry comrades.

Cats, in general, are self-aware enough to understand that if your fridge stays full, they too get fed. They aren’t obedient or bound by tradition or motivated by obligation. This means that Cats have something far more profound underpinning their capacity to be in lasting, authentic relationship: the reason they’re here is because they choose you. They deeply understand the balance between independence and interdependence, the value of mutual trust, and what it means to have our survival bound with one another. This is what makes them lucky…not in the cheap casino kinda luck that evaporates (or worst, comes at a later steep transactional cost) but rather they are masters of the kind of calm and steady committed work it takes to make our own luck and forge new futures. Their fierce independence and love of autonomy belies a deep commitment to sharing space and the collective.

Water Cats, being in the element of Water, are perhaps the most powerful in the clowder (yes, that is the word for a collective of cats) among their Fire, Metal, Wind, and Earth mates. No one has ever looked at a coursing river or the beating of the surf against the tide or how rain quickly turns highways into roaring floods and questioned the awesome might of water. All Water Cats have the potential of water power — life-affirming or all-destructive — within them. Water is life — nourishing all around it, sustaining all other life on this planet. Water is so precious that Kānaka Maoli word for wealth is wai, one and the same as water. Water connects us all and this vantage point offers Water Cats the power to see the big picture and weave life-affirming connections and relationships in surprising and creative ways. This is why Water Cat is your carebear within the cat crew with the most pure and wholesome capacity to nurture and to love others. They love like water which is to say that they typically reject scarcity and have abundant love to go around. The Water Cat’s deep well of compassion and empathy are its most admired superpower. At the heart of all organizing are relationships and communities making the Water Cat a natural organizer and freedom fighter.

Their emotional intuition is next-level, giving them an uncanny and lovable quality of being able to pick up and anticipate the feelings and inner-states of others. But, this beautiful gift can have a self-destructive side considering water’s fluid and boundary-less qualities. I think you know where I’m going with this. They are prone to taking on and absorbing what is not theirs to carry, muddying their sense of purpose and clarity. This hurts their ability to show up in their most authentic whole self which is a disservice to themselves and the rest of us. Most cats won’t hesitate to explicitly communicate to let you know when you’ve violated their boundary. If you watch a cat, you’ll also notice that they conserve their energy, going from languidly stretched out to leaping into action at a second’s notice. Their practice of rest as their default state is the magic sauce to what keeps cats agile and nimble and ready.

Unlike other cats, Water Cats sometimes forget that they too deserve to be loud and unapologetic about their boundaries and needs. Water Cat, without mindfulness and intention or under extreme distress, can suffer imbalances where they might cycle between interdependence into codependency, then over-correct into hyper-individualistic independence. Water Cats need to remember that saying “No” and having needs doesn’t mean abandonment or make them less lovable. They need to work at not over-identifying with caring for others at their own expense because ultimately martyrdom is a ego-driven form of attention-seeking. This can be hard to discern when white supremacy culture falsely rewards and fetishes self-sacrifice as leadership. When Water Cats forget to fill their own well or to allow community to help them, their resentment can take them to a dark place. In some tellings of the original race of the twelve zodiac animals to the Jade Emperor banquet (which is why Cat isn’t always in the stories that get passed down), the Rat and others conspired against Cat to drown them in the river as a way to get ahead in the race. Having been left for dead and their existence erased, Cat remembers what it was like to endure, and they know what it means to survive. This painful ancestral memory is both the source of their deep affinity for “we keep us safe” and empathy for those excluded or facing oppression, but it can manifest under deep trauma as a rigid belief that “only I keep myself safe”. For the Water Cat, they feel most at home and natural in really expansive, “go-with-the-flow” fluidity so need to exercise great self-compassion, patience, and disciplined practice in order to feel into the boundaries that make them feel loved and nourished.

Anyone who crosses paths with them recognizes quickly that their next-level emotional intelligence and (occasionally unnerving) intuition make Water Cat one of the most brilliant and principled strategic masterminds out there. Put these quiet, cool (dare I say sexy?!) charmers in a room and watch them fill it with pure magic. On the flip side, Water Cats sniff out easily where their opponents underestimate them and wield it tactfully to their advantage. They know when to retract their claws and when to attack. Water Cats are quick and decisive and always ready to take direct action, so keep that in mind. Cross a line and they will not hesitate to cut you. This reputation precedes them and truthfully is a part of their power for others think twice before daring to disrespect or mess with them or their friends. Water Cats can benefit from their Metal and Earth friends. Metal is the only element that can carry water to give them a break — but they also can be sharp and unyielding which can feel suffocating and constraining. Water Cat doesn’t thrive in rigid, dogmatic environments and their fluidity makes them a bit allergic to binding binaries that lack the expansive and generative radical imagination Water Cats crave. Earth is nourished by Water and in turn can provide clarity and cleanse Water when they operate in a harmonious ecosystem with flowing pathways, but without reciprocity, simply turns into stagnant mud.

We all can learn from the Water Cats who must remember to take extra care to protect their heart and their energy. The Year of the Water Cat holds big energy for collective care and organizing strategy. In particular, this year offers a great opportunity to tap into one’s inner strengths and maybe lean into vulnerability by allowing oneself to show up in our fullest, most glorious human selves. Pay attention to flow and creating movement in areas that are life-affirming and that give you pleasure.

Oh, how could we forget? All Cats Are Beautiful. They know we keep us safe and would never call the cops on you. Neither should you, especially this Year of the Water Cat. Very, very bad luck. Anti-Asian violence has become more visible but we painfully know it's far from new. Mobilize grants to API organizing with deep roots in and across communities and deep relationships in solidarity, abolitionist, and multiracial organizing. Many Asian Movement Organizing Grantees often are excluded, overlooked, or not funded at all because of who they are and the high-risk work they lead. In the Lunar New Year tradition of good luck money envelopes, we think there’s no greater way to make our own luck and manifest our vision in 2023 than funding API movement building. The Lunar New Year between January 22 - February 5th is a deeply auspicious time. Your actions shape your year so beginning with deepened commitment to collective liberation, generosity and abundance sets you on the path to be a formidable force for good in 2023.

YEAR OF THE WATER CAT/RABBIT MOVEMENT INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES:

these are the times to grow our souls…not only [do we] say NO to the existing power structure…we must embrace the power within each of us to create the world anew. ― Grace Lee Boggs, Year of the Rabbit

“Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.” ― Grace Lee Boggs

Reforms and revolutions are created by the illogical actions of people. Very few logical people ever make reforms and none make revolutions. Rights are what you make and what you take. ― James Boggs