APEN internship harris public policy
Jessy Nguyen, Class of 2019

Student: Jessy Nguyen, Class of 2019

Position: Fellow at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)

 

What is your policy area of interest?  Is there anything you want us to know about you? 

My name is Jessy Nguyen and I am a second-generation Vietnamese American and descendent of refugees. I am an incoming second year student pursuing a Master’s in Public Policy, expecting to graduate in 2019. I am interested in health policy because when I was a pre-medical student in my undergraduate college, I realized that the United States health care system negatively affected the doctors’ work and their patients’ health, especially for communities of color. In addition, I am very involved with community activism. I believe that if we want to create social change, being involved with organizing and activism is absolutely necessary. 

Tell us about your internship and the organization you are working with – what is the organization’s mission? What are your responsibilities?  What projects are you working on?

I am currently a fellow at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN). APEN’s goal is to fight for environmental justice on a local and statewide level for the communities in the Bay area and greater California to have a healthy environment to live in. They approach environmental justice through three ways: organizing, policy, and civic engagement. My role is to assist in electoral organizing to create the political power to change statewide policies.

There are a couple of projects I am working on; first, I am engaging in the civic engagement project by integrating the Integrated Voter Engagement (IVE) model. Unlike traditional civic engagement strategies where the goal is to increase voter turnout, the IVE seeks to incorporate education, base-building tactics, and leadership development to build capacity for long-term social change. One way we are approaching this is to expand our local membership pool by creating a statewide membership that is driven by grassroots advocacy. Second, I am responsible for policy research on the propositions for California this upcoming November midterm election. In order to reach as many voters as possible, I will work with other non-profits across California to put on a Ballot Initiative Forum to educate the community on the contents of the ballots. For the last project, I am incorporating data analytics to help guide APEN’s organizers for more efficient outreach to voters most affected by pollution in the Bay area.

What was the interview process like? How long did it take to secure your internship?

Because I want to eventually do work in California, I found the internship through communicating with a lot of people in that area. The interview had two rounds. The first round was to gauge if I was qualified for the fellowship. In the second round, I had interviews with two different organizations – APEN in the Bay area and AAAJ (Asian American Advancing Justice) in Chicago. These interviews were to assess which organization I should be placed in. Because APEN does work with policy and organizing and is located in California, they were the best place to work in alignment with my career goals. 

What has been the most valuable part of the internship so far?

The most valuable part of my internship is learning the limitations that prevent policy from creating change. When working with the policy team and the organizing team, I learned that even though some policies can produce positive change, they cannot be implemented because of political obstacles. Without the necessary political pressure from community organizing, it is difficult for a sound policy to be enacted. Although policy can create institutional changes, I saw that it has troubles addressing systemic changes. In other words, policy cannot address the deeper structural issues like white supremacy and patriarchy to create social change. For instance, the implementation of The Civil Rights Act, although it made it unlawful to discriminate, did not dismantle white supremacy. I came to understand that organizing and activism can fill in the gaps that policy has to break down these systems of oppression. 

What has surprised you about this experience?

One of the challenges as an electoral organizer is to find ways to work within an election system that disenfranchises the communities where we want to advocate. In general, aspects like voter ID requirement, racial gerrymandering, citizenship requirements, and language capacity make it difficult, or impossible, for many marginalized communities to participate in elections. Currently, I am strategizing with APEN colleagues to leverage power in the electoral arena and advocate for those who cannot be involved. Another challenge is thinking about how to organize voters during an off-cycle election season. I am coming up with ways to reach out to constituents to have them speak with their representatives or to have them be involved to educate other voters on the issues that will come up this November. Also, accountability is an issue that we face. To specify, when we elect a representative, there is no structure of accountability for the representative to realize their campaign platform. We are thinking about how to build a movement large enough that would ensure that the representative will pursue what they said they would do.

What skills are you using most in your internship? Are there any Harris courses that helped you develop skills you are using?

I find myself frequently using my data analytic I learned at Harris. Coming into this fellowship, I wanted to find ways to incorporate data with community organizing. I chose to work on a project that allows me to use my R skills to create an interactive map of California. Specifically, I am using the data from APEN to map out the characteristics of the voters in California as well as their living conditions. I want this interactive map to serve as a tool to help guide organizers to efficiently allocate resources to target voters who are disenfranchised because of their existing environmental conditions. Additionally, this tool can better analyze which communities of color are disproportionately affected by environmental injustices. This project was possible because of the programming skills I learned from the statistic courses I took at Harris in addition to R-bar. 

How has this internship helped with your career path as you transition to your second year at Harris?

I want to pursue work at the intersection of community organizing and public policy. Through Seeding Change, I was connected with an organization in Chicago called Asian American Advancing Justice (AAAJ) that does work with policy and electoral organizing. As I am transitioning into my second year, I will be able to continue exploring organizations that do similar work. Since I would like to return to California to start my policy career, I will remain connected with leaders in and out of APEN who are already supporting my job search after graduation.

What is the one piece of advice about holding an internship that you wish had been given to you?

Ask a lot of questions. Although I am tied to a particular project, I strive to engage with the other departments of APEN. Asking a lot of questions helped me not only learn how each department works together to achieve the mission of an organization, but also provided me with an opportunity to network more deliberately with different leaders.