Asian Women’s Shelter on Advocacy, Trafficking, Public Awareness, and Global Gender Justice – Interview with Orchid Pusey (2)

Making Rights Real for Survivors

🧶 Kyeol : AWS was involved in legal advocacy around the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. Were there other moments when AWS helped push for changes in the legal system?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : Yes. We do not have a policy department or a policy director, but we have been part of many advocacy efforts, and that work continues. We also worked on California’s first state anti-trafficking law around 2006, together with Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach.^[1] That was very much an Asian-led effort.

Right now, we are supporting several state bills where organizations are leading the policy work. One is about child custody. Some proposals say courts should generally favor a 50/50 custody, but our position is that child safety should come first. Custody decisions should be based on real lived life, not just genetics.

Another bill is about forced marriage. It would include forced marriage in the definition of domestic violence, so survivors can access state protections. There is also a proposal for a domestic violence offender registry. I think it comes from good intentions, but we do not think that kind of registry would be good for our communities, especially immigrant communities trying to avoid police involvement.

🧶 Kyeol : Are there also local advocacy efforts that are especially important to AWS?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : Yes. Sometimes the work is closer to home, and in those cases, we may have a bigger voice. For example, we have worked around the San Francisco Police Department’s language access policy.

We know what can happen when police respond to a domestic violence situation. If the abusive person speaks better English or has been in the country longer, that can shape how the situation is understood. So we want everyone to have language access, no matter who they are, so they can explain what happened, what they saw, and what they experienced. Our local systems were not built with our communities in mind, so we still have a long way to go.

🧶 Kyeol : Beyond legislation and policy, does AWS also do advocacy in individual cases?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : Yes. Sometimes we do systems advocacy case by case, when someone is going through court, the police, or another legal process, and the system is not doing what it should. In those moments, we step in and say, “No, this person has the right to this. This should have happened.”

Interpreting is one example. Sometimes, certified court interpreters are not prepared to interpret gender-based violence cases. Survivors may not feel comfortable saying words like “rape” in court, so they find another way to say it, and the meaning gets watered down or changed. In those situations, we have to say, “Actually, that is not what was said. The meaning is incorrect.” It may seem smaller than legislative advocacy, but we do this kind of advocacy often.

Supporting Survivors in a Climate of Fear

🧶 Kyeol : What issues or challenges feel most urgent to AWS’s mission right now?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : What feels most urgent right now is staying whole as an organization in this moment. Immigrant communities and trans communities are in crisis, and that affects everything we do. Even in a state like California, federal policies still deeply affect our programs and communities.

Survivors carry that stress, too. Stress does not cause domestic violence, but it can make existing domestic violence worse. When a community is scared or under threat, survivors often pull back even more. They feel they have to hold everything together—for their children, their family, and their community. Right now, communities are under stress, survivors are becoming more isolated, and programs are losing money.

🧶 Kyeol : How are those pressures affecting AWS as an organization?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : We lost a federal grant for half a million dollars, and other federal programs we applied for were canceled before awards were even made.

It is interesting to think about where we started. When AWS opened, there was no Violence Against Women Act. There changed in 1994, and we were part of the legislative advocacy effort to include immigrant women’s provisions. Before that, if an immigrant woman did not already have a green card, she had no way to self-petition. After those provisions passed, she could.

But now, even though those laws exist, everything feels more frightening. Organizations like ours are facing a funding reality that we have never seen before, and that is one of the most urgent challenges.

🧶 Kyeol : How does this climate affect immigrant survivors who may be eligible for support?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : Even when people have legal options, they may not know about them. That is why communication with the community is so important.

But right now, even when survivors know they are eligible for support, some are choosing not to use it because they are afraid. What is legal and illegal does not feel like it matters as much. You might have the legal right to be here and still be picked up by ICE^[2] and sent to a detention center far from your family.

The same is true for housing or public benefits. A survivor may be eligible for housing, but the system may require entering personal information into a database, and some people do not want to do that right now. Others worry that public benefits could affect their immigration status later. So the challenge is not only whether resources exist. It is whether people feel safe enough to use them.

🧶 Kyeol : Is there anything you wish more people understood about what immigrant-serving organizations are facing now?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : I think if you do not work in a field that serves immigrant and refugee communities, it is easy not to know how many changes are happening. And if you are an immigrant who has been here a long time, speaks English, and has solid documentation, it can also be easy not to see how immigrants with fewer protections are being cut off from support. For organizations like ours, the challenges are coming from both sides. Communities are more afraid, survivors are more isolated, and the resources we depend on are being cut. That is the reality we are facing right now.

Human Trafficking in Many Forms

🧶 Kyeol : AWS also addresses human trafficking, including around major events in the Bay Area, such as the Super Bowl or the World Cup. Could you explain more about this?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : The reality is that this is not new. Across time and across nations, when there are large, temporary gatherings of men, sex trafficking tends to go up. It could be a gold rush, a mining boom, the World Cup, or military occupation and military stations. We see the same pattern over and over again.

Some people know this happens around war or military presence, but fewer people realize it can also happen around economic booms or major public events. When the boom happens, trafficking of women and girls can spike.

At the same time, we always try to remind people that trafficking can look many different ways. It is not only the image people often have of a 15-year-old girl. It can also be a 69-year-old woman who has had to leave her own family and travel around as someone else’s nanny. Her case may not seen as “glamorous,” and she may not be able to get an attorney.

So we want people to understand the full scope of trafficking, especially in domestic work and restaurant work, sex work, and other forms of labor. Asian women, in particular, can be trapped in many different settings.

🧶 Kyeol : Has awareness of this issue changed over time?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : Yes. There is much more attention now than there was 20 or 30 years ago. Twenty years ago, we did not yet have our state trafficking law. Thirty years ago, we did not have the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the T visa, or the U visa.^[3] There was very little legislative support. So there have been positive changes. Now there is more awareness, more language, and more support than before.

Let’s Talk About Us: Public Art for Community Awareness

🧶 Kyeol : Speaking of awareness, AWS’s Let’s Talk About Us campaign seems very inspiring.

🧶 Orchid Pusey : That was a really fun project. The Asian Foundation gave us funding, which was a rare opportunity. Usually, we do not have money to work with artists because we are already trying to fund things like life skills and economic support. So that support made a big difference.

We partnered with artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya^[4] to create public art that would resonate with our communities. With community support, we were able to place the campaign in BART stations, on Muni,^[5] and on billboards. We wanted the images to be eye-catching, colorful, and supportive—something people would really notice in public space. The staff, advocates, and Amanda worked together to connect our core messages with an artistic vision. We also wanted the campaign to stay accessible online, so people could download the materials, print posters for free, and use them in schools, organizations, or at home.

We ended up with five messages: “Be the friend who brings it up,” “Love Shouldn’t Hurt,” “Everyone Deserves Respect,” “Just Listen,” and “Our Community, Our Responsibility.” We got really good feedback. People took selfies with the campaign images and sent them to us, so community members across the city were helping share the messages.^[6]

We translated the campaign into different languages. What I loved most was that the project did not just disappear after the billboards came down. We still have posters we can distribute, and the materials are still useful. K-PEACE even turned the Korean version into a calendar. So the campaign kept generating new educational and outreach materials.

I really wish we had funding to do this kind of art collaboration more often.

🧶 Kyeol : To conclude, what is the key message you want Kyeol readers all over the world to take away about AWS’s efforts and the broader fight against gender-based violence and human trafficking?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : I want them to know two main things. First, every single person—including the person reading this article—has something meaningful they can do, almost every day, to change the culture. I don’t mean ethnic culture. I mean the broader global culture that reduces women’s humanity.

It shows up everywhere: how we raise children, how we respond when someone in the family is mistreated, what movies we support or choose not to support. There are opportunities everywhere. And when you think of it that way, it feels less hopeless. Reducing gender-based violence makes every neighborhood, school, workplace, community, and country better.

The second thing is that gender-based violence organizations in local communities need support. We are not profit-generating organizations, and governments or communities are still not investing enough to end this violence. Even a donation to a local domestic violence organization can go much further than people might think.

So there are two ways to be part of this work. One is indirect: help change the culture. The other is direct: support the organizations doing the work. Because this work is still such an underdog in the world.

🧶 Kyeol : Do you have any other final thoughts you would like to share?

🧶 Orchid Pusey : I didn’t start AWS, so when I talk about it, I feel like I’m really praising the founders. It is a unique place and a unique type of organization. Some places already have something like AWS, but many places do not. So maybe some readers will find inspiration and do something in their own local communities. That would be wonderful.