“The most precious thing you can get from others is trust,” says local grassroots organizer.
Tony Guan’s campaign against Prop 16 got national attention and he helped rally for the victorious plaintiffs in a US Supreme Court victory against racial preferences. In this Opportunity Now exclusive Q&A, he talks about the personal cost of activism, ongoing challenges, and the need to build networks and scout for local leaders, to have an even greater impact on state and local policy.
Opportunity Now: After you helped defeat Prop 16, was the fight over, or did you keep having to defend Prop 209?
Tony Guan: Right after our Prop 16 victory, some Assembly members vowed to push for another bill, so we had another fight over ACA 7 which again would have dismantled Prop 209. This is the frustrating part about living in California. All those legislators can just keep trying again, even if they failed at first.
For ACA 7, they put some exceptions on the proposition, like ‘we treat everybody equally, except for the following conditions.’ That would have brought back racial preferences. So we started to organize again.
ON: What changed in how you organized after Prop 16?
TG: We went to the capitol building in Sacramento and visited the legislators to express our opposition. We organized quite well, together with Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, which was the big partner and leading force in the fight against ACA 7. We wore T-Shirts opposing ACA 7, and had a really great presence there. Eventually, the bill author decided to withdraw the measure because they knew that if it got on the ballot, they would have a very negative result. Without our effort as a grassroots group, that wasn’t going to happen.
Those bills go through the committees very easily and get on the ballot. But we made it clear that if they put it on the ballot, it's going to negatively impact their whole party, all their candidates, because the people of California already said ‘No’ and would ask ‘What the heck? In two years you put another similar proposition on the ballot again?’
We made that point clear, and they realized that, and they also admitted that it's not the time for them to talk about repealing Prop 209.
ON: It seems that it took several political fights for you to slowly gain credibility, and real political power.
TG: It’s more like trust. The most precious thing you can get from others is trust. They see what kind of person you are, and then they decide if they want to work with you or not on some issues. That’s the thing you cannot easily win.
ON: So how did you earn that trust?
TG: As a grassroots organizer, I started out with nothing. I’m just a nobody, still am. I just worked on one issue after another. After the XX LINK TO PART 1 airplane noise issue, I got a core group of 40 to 50 people. We’ve worked together for years and naturally trust each other because we saw how we all devoted our time, effort, and talent to all sorts of different things and at a lot of levels.
But you can’t just go out and tell people, ‘Trust me, bro.’ Nobody is buying that, even if you have a really good speech, and you can move people in the moment. After that, they need to work with you, see how you work and deliver results. That’s the hard part.
ON: What changed once people started taking your work seriously?
TG: People call me up, they know I’ve worked really hard on local issues such as school programs, school board elections, school district remapping, community safety, and other safety issues. They ask me to publish announcements for their causes, for rallies, distribution, donations, yard signs that we print as a grassroots group. Sometimes people reach out to me for advice on what steps to take to solve a community issue. That kind of trust is priceless, incredible.
ON: Didn’t your fight against Prop 16 get national attention?
TG: After we defeated Prop16 people from other states were encouraged a whole lot. If we could succeed in California, there's definitely a chance they could protect equal rights in the United States’s constitution, too.
We had a big rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, in October, 2022, when they did the hearing, to support Mr. Ed Blum and the Students for Fair Admissions lawsuit against Harvard, which was successful. Multiple people came to us to congratulate us on the Prop 16 victory. My friend Eva Guo, who sits on the board of Students for Fair Admissions, told us that they were really encouraged by our victory.
Mr. Ward Connerly also delivered a speech at that rally urging the judges not to buy into all the emotional arguments from particular interest groups. I believe we also filed the amicus brief in support of the Students for Fair Admissions.
ON: Doesn’t all this hard work as a grassroots organizer come at some personal cost?
TG: It means I’m less available for my family and my professional work. My wife sometimes worried why I was working on something in some other city that’s so remote to me. But I am very grateful for her understanding. Without her being so supportive, I cannot have spent so much time on so many issues.
I will say it's quite a rewarding feeling that my presence in this timeline matters a little bit. That gives a meaning of my time, my life.
ON: What’s the biggest weakness you see in your grassroots organizing thus far?
TG: I think we lack a network where like-minded people and organizations can share and can get to know each other, so that they can help each other when the need arises.
That said, we do have a very good relationship with the local Jewish community. They have some active organizers. When they organized rallies in Stanford against antisemitism, they asked us to show up and support them, and we went there. Then we had some rallies and asked them to support us, and they came and spoke. If we build a stronger network for all the local communities, I think it's going to be much easier for future grassroots activities.
ON: Isn’t there a lot of turnover among people who volunteer?
TG: You can’t count on one volunteer always being a volunteer. So we need to build continuously, involve more new people and tap into their talent, get them connected. Over time, it’s going to require a big effort to actually bring some real change to California.
We also need to discover more leaders in the community. These will be people who are motivated enough so that they would like to come up and lead for some issue. It cannot be just done by the same group of people.
For example, schools. When our kids grow up, we will be less engaged with all the issues in the school districts. But whatever happens to the school district could have a big impact on the community even if you don't have kids there. So we need people to be alert, vigilant on the issues when they're there. But we also need to look to the future. You cannot count on the same group for all the issues as they will for sure burn out very quickly. I would like to see more people coming out, so everyone can do a little bit to avoid somebody or some small group of people having to do a lot and sacrifice their life considerably.
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