I wasn’t sure whether we’d be making opening remarks for the panel at Temple—which is on API solidarity with Black liberation movements—so I wrote this draft in case I needed to say something at the beginning. Luckily, we’re skipping that (which to be honest I prefer for panels), but that leaves me with 1,006 words on how to be an ally. Which I figure I’d put up somewhere and eventually revisit to clean up for a more general audience.

Most of my work has been around using technology to help make mainstream activism, journalism, and publishing more inclusive. Here are a few things I’ve learned about how to do conscientiously:

1. Educate yourself.

This is always step one. And this means go out and learn for yourself. Take an intersectional feminism course, take a racial history course. Don’t expect your marginalized friends to perform the emotional labor of teaching you. And since many of you are probably some white person’s only Asian friend, you know exactly what I mean.

2. Speak up against racism in your own community and your own family.

We know how much racism is in asian communities. And not just here, but also in Asia, when I went back to Taiwan a few months ago, I heard completely unnecessary anti-Black microagressions every single day. But you don’t have to do it alone. For LfBL, we’ve had a lot of stories of siblings coming together to show the video to their parents and talk about it. And just as many stories of parents sharing it with their friends. Yeah, we’ve got retweets, online petitions, and all that, but the most effective tool for changing minds is still sitting down at the dinner table and speaking from the heart.

And this is hard, right? We don’t just have generational differences, those of us who are first and second generation—we’ve got cultural and language barriers, too. But that’s why Letters for Black Lives came together. Individually, none of us had the resources to make this converation work, but with hundreds of us together we created a thing. Know that you are not alone.

But the first rule of Asian America is that there is no monolythic Asian America, right? Like, my experience as a American-born Taiwanese is totally different from a Desi American. The real power behind LfBL is that when the translations teams took the English version of the letter, they didn’t just make word-for-word translations. The Korean version talks about clashes between Korean and Black communities, several talk about parallels between the fight against colonialism in Asia and Black liberation here. Each of these letters has been written in our parents’ language and culture.

And that’s why it was important for us to make sure that Letters for Black Lives was shared on Weboo and printed in community language newspapers. That the most powerful stuff isn’t in the English version, it’s the Farsi letter and the Malaysian letter, the Vietnamese recording, the ASL recording. Because it’s powerful to read a thing in your mother’s writing, but what’s even more powerful is to hear it in your mother’s tongue.

3. Amplify Black and other marginalized voices.

Do not speak over them. Support them where you can. Especially important in the context of API communities: find black asian voices, they are covered up far to much in our communitites. Know when to step up and when to step back. A part of this is realizing that when you make a mistake—and we all make mistakes—fess up, apologize, and learn. Along with that is know that when you have wronged someone, they have every reason to stop trusting you, so it is not their place to forgive you, but it is still your job to make things right.

4. Don’t just be an ally, Be a co-conspirator.

An ally is someone who will eyeroll with you at the right time, or retweet the right people. But then commiserate about that thing their uncle said when you’re already fighting enough battles and don’t have the emotional energy to deal with yet another story about someone else’s racist family. An ally is a person who is there for you when it is convenient for them and makes sure you see it. But a co-conspirator, they got yer back. A co-conspirator will stand up when you’re not there. A co-conspirator will stand up when you’re too damn tired. And then they’ll step back when you’re ready again. But most of all, a co-conspirator is with you to fight for collective liberation. And that why even though this start as something for Asian Americans, people wrote a Dakota letter, LatinX letters, Asian Canadian letters, an African immigrants letters.

Because we know that Asians will not see equality until Black and Indigenous communities do. That Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese communities will not rise when our Hmong siblings are still among the most underserved communities in this country. That queer rights is too often only about gay and lesbian rights, and not enough about the rest of us. That ableism and ageism hurt young and old, and those with invisible illnesses, including mental illnesses. And that toxic masculinity is a function of white supremacy and colonialism and is killing our girls and our boys. And that we’ve got to work together because we’re all struggling against the same damn kyriarchy.

Sorry…that got a bit revolutionary at the end. So Number 5, which is actually…

0. Self-care. Self-care. Fer real, self-care.

Look after yourself. And make sure those around you are looking after themselves, too.

Which leads to my final point: I studied political philosophy in college, so I can go pretty deep on Marxist feminism, ethical theory, &c. But the thing I’ve realized that is that more important that Peter Singer or Rawls, is finding people who spread love, joy, and understanding. Because at its core that’s what all this is about: It’s not just love for our own tribe and our own comunities. This is about you and me, the person sitting next to you, Alfred Olango who was shot by police while having a seizure, your adjunct lecturer who is living check to check, the Pulse nightclub, this is about Trayvon Martin. It’s spreading that beyond our own borders to understand and raise each other up. And for me, what better place to start but at the dinner table? But not just at yours or mine. But at the dinner table all around the world?