ST PAUL, Minn. — To kick off the beginning of Asian American Heritage Month, the Coalition of Asian American Leaders held CAAL day at the Capitol, a yearly tradition.
"We're here to advocate for three really important bills," CAAL's executive director ThaoMee Xiong said.
Xiong explained the first of the three bills has already been passed before, in 2017.
"That's asking for $3 million a year for the biennium, so $6 million total for small, culturally specific nonprofits," she said. "Every biennium we have to try to pass it to make sure it gets funding and 2017 was the first year it got passed."
The other bills include the ethnic studies bill and the combating hate bill. Those two bills drew more emotions from guest speakers at the event.
The ethnic studies bill asks for all Minnesota school districts to offer ethnic studies classes.
"As an adopted Korean American, now an academic in Korean adoptive studies, I have been on that journey as so many of us have been," Kelly Condit-Shrestha said. "And experienced firsthand what research says about seeing yourself reflected."
"We don't get to actually learn about the true, raw history — the realistic history of things that actually happened until we go to college," a student said.
As for the combating hate bill, Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan indicated it's moving forward.
"We know that our Department of Human Rights has been working hard on that as well," she said. "It is shared priority and we hear you and we know we have a lot of good things to celebrate, but we also have seen the ugliest face of Minnesota with hate crimes and hate speech against our people, against our communities, and we won't stand for it."
"It's a bill to fight against hate crimes against anybody," Xiong clarified. "And so there are specific statutory language that defines what a hate crime is, and who is in a protected class. The reason why CAAL is fighting for it is because of the increase of anti-Asian hate since 2020."
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