Origins

Gòngmíng Collective is one of the few language justice groups in the United States dedicated specifically to Chinese-language work and organizing. The group was founded in 2016 in New York City and was very much a product of the organizing ecosystem of the city at that time. Many of the interpreters who became a part of the collective had developed their skills and appreciation for interpreting and creating multilingual spaces through work with CAAAV, an organization that builds grassroots power within New York City’s working-class Asian communities. CAAAV regularly works in Chinese, Bengali, and Korean and relies heavily on multilingual organizing. 

In 2016/2017, Chinatown organizers working with groups like Chinatown Art Brigade, were pushing back against gentrification and displacement caused by a spate of new art galleries opening up in the area. One of the results of this organizing was a 10-point pledge that they asked gallery owners to agree to. Point number six was a commitment to “provide language accessibility.” While point 10 offered the caveat that translating materials alone was not enough to absolve any one gallery of their complicity in gentrification. 

At this point in time, Caracol Language Cooperative had been an active worker-owned cooperative doing language justice work within New York City for a few years. With inspiration and guidance from Caracol and the motivation to go beyond providing translations for galleries and build more access for their communities, the founding members of Gòngmíng decided to form their collective. 

Evolution 

Early on in the collective’s existence, they obtained a grant through fiscal sponsorship from CAAAV and held workshops and gatherings meant to create spaces for bilingual members of the Chinese diaspora to build their language skills and explore what language justice means for them. For example, Gòngmíng held a Chinese Language Skill Share regarding LGBTQ-related conversations in Chinese in which attendees built a word bank together of common terms related to identity, mental health, sex, relationships, and other LGBTQ-related terminology in Chinese. In addition to meeting the needs of grassroots movements in Chinatown and with Chinese-speaking New Yorkers, Gòngmíng provides an opportunity for the collective to build community around language justice, hone the skills of bilingual organizers, and bring more people into language work. This means that creating space to socialize, share meals, and even do activities together like karaoke with like-minded people are critical to the fabric of the collective. Roxy Chang, core collective member, says there has always been “a hard component of community,” which is what brought her into the work and gives her the joy to keep doing it.  

Since the pandemic, the group has found it hard to sustain meetings at the same frequency as before, and instead of having a full core committee to coordinate the work of the collective, there are only two collective members doing coordinating work amongst over twenty translators and interpreters. For everyone in the collective, the language work they do with Gòngmíng is a natural extension of their organizing and social justice work, not a full-time or even necessarily part-time job. As ManSee describes it, the group likes to “stay close to the ground” and build partnerships with organizations that are working on the issues most relevant to their communities and has no desire to occupy the space that a traditional language service provider might in the city. In addition to the challenge of sustaining a collective while working other jobs, one of the challenges for the group is meeting the needs of such diverse Chinese communities in New York City. While Mandarin and Cantonese are the main dialects spoken in the city, there are several others such as Shanghainese, Fujianese, and Toisanese that are not as easy for the group to cover. 

While Gòngmíng has slowed and evolved since the onset of the world-altering COVID-19 pandemic, they remain committed to their work, and strive to move forward mindful of their capacity, so as to avoid burnout. The collective hopes to keep building spaces for community connection, hold new workshops later in 2023, and connect with other Chinese language justice workers throughout the U.S.