Andy Kang is TAAF’s Director of Anti-Hate and brings over a decade of experience in anti-hate work. While serving as Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Chicago, Andy’s team led the launch of the TEAACH Act, which made Illinois the first state in the country to mandate the teaching of Asian American history at the secondary level. In response to the rise in anti-Asian violence in Chicago, Andy also launched local bystander intervention trainings in partnership with Right to Be and CAIR-Chicago, and successfully advocated for the re-establishment of the Illinois Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes. Andy was one of the lead negotiators and strategists for the Illinois TRUST Act, the VOICES Act, and Automatic Voter Registration, and also advocated successfully to strengthen Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance in response to police abuse of a Chinese American woman.
He joins TAAF after having served as Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition and co-chair of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), the largest national grassroots immigrant rights network. Andy holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a J.D. from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He currently lives in Philadelphia.
To me, Eradicate Hate was the most important gathering of 2021 for those of us who work on issues related to domestic extremism and organized hate. The Summit uniquely combined a variety of perspectives, including experts, civil society representatives, politicians and policymakers, and the families and loved ones of victims. Eradicate Hate has the important mission of standing against the rising tide of hate and extremism in our society, and it’s an honor to be able to support this mission.
