Rising Voices

It was launched by Tides Advocacy and is now a project of the Center for Empowered Politics, the lobbying and advocacy affiliate of the San Francisco-based Chinese Progressive Association, a left-wing community organizing group that has been criticized for aligning with the government of the People’s Republic of China. ^{3 4}

History and Leadership

Rising Voices is a left-of-center advocacy organization that focuses on organizing Asian-American women in Michigan, which it defines as including “cis, trans, Gender Non-Conforming and femme-identifying” people. ¹ Its programs attempt to grow the political power of the Asian-American community in Michigan, which in the 2020 Census made up just 4.1% of the state’s population and in 2022 was identified by the state’s demographer as Michigan’s fifth-largest racial/ethnic group, after White, Black, Hispanic/Latino, and multiracial. ^{5 6 7}

Rising Voices was created in 2021 when the Michigan Asian American Progressives advocacy organization combined with the Rising Voices of Asian American Families charitable fund. ^{8 9} The new Rising Voices advocacy organization and Rising Voices Fund charitable foundation became projects of Tides Advocacy and the Tides Foundation, respectively. ¹⁰

In 2023, Rising Voices became a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Empowered Politics, which is a 501(c)(4) affiliate of the San Francisco-based Chinese Progressive Association, a left-wing community organizing group that has been accused of aligning with the government of the People’s Republic of China and has received favorable coverage from the state-affiliated China Daily newspaper. ^{3 4 11} The Rising Voices Fund became fiscally sponsored by the Center for Empowered Politics Fund at that point. ³

The co-executive directors of Rising Voices are Regina Tsang and Jasmine Rivera. ¹² As of April 2024, founding executive director Laura Misumi, who left that role in 2022, was general counsel at Resilient Strategies, an outsourced nonprofit management company that provides infrastructure for left-wing political and activist organizations and is controlled in part by the Center for Empowered Politics Education Fund. ^{13 14 15}

Advocacy

In addition to traditional left-of-center topics such as government-provided and taxpayer-funded health care and increased spending on government-operated K-12 schools, Rising Voices also promotes radical left-wing social policies such as “the abolition of all prisons and all policing systems that only punish and incarcerate”; “dismantling of systems of oppression, including but not limited to white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism, anti-Blackness, ableism, and the heteropatriarchy”; and opposition to “the prioritization of written history and formal education from western perspectives.” ⁸

It also promotes the mandatory inclusion of Asian and Asian-American history in K-12 curricula as well as increased funding for English-language education for native speakers of Asian languages.

Rising Voices supported the 2022 referendum campaign to create a “new individual right to reproductive freedom” in the Michigan constitution, which voters approved. ¹⁶

Rising Voices jointly operates the Michigan Action SuperPAC with Detroit Action, a left-of-center organizing and activist organization that is a project of Tides Advocacy. ^{5 17 2} In the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, all of the SuperPAC’s spending was in favor of Democratic candidates or against Republicans. ¹⁸

In addition to its SuperPAC, Rising Voices also operates Rising Voices Votes, a get out the vote operation. In 2022, its then-executive director reported that its remote phone bank team and in-person paid canvassers had made 165,567 calls, sent 44,459 texts, and knocked on 4,270 doors to support favored candidates in Michigan’s 2021 municipal elections. ⁸