“KNOw History/KNOw Self”: Khmer Youth Organizing for Justice in Long Beach

Abstract

ABSTRACTKhmer Girls in Action in Long Beach cultivates the leadership of high school-aged students from refugee families to organize for gender, racial, and economic justice in their communities. This article looks at the knowledge that KGA’s youth organizing produces about the institutional roots of the deportation of Cambodian refugees. The youth connect the U.S. war in Cambodia with the war on crime and gangs in Long Beach to call into question the deportable “criminal alien” and the benevolent resettlement narrative. They redefine what counts as immigrant rights through their campaigns to address disciplinary practices in their schools and police surveillance.