Updates from the 2024 JACSC Legislative Advocacy Meeting in DC
JACSC Advocacy Cohort at the White House
After months of planning, the 2024 JACSC Legislative Advocacy Meeting was a great success. Our advocacy cohort included two dozen individuals who flew in from across the country, representing over a dozen organizations.
Working together with JACL National, JACSC participated in meetings with key decision makers in the Department of Interior, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, White House Office of Public Engagement, White House Initiative on Asian Americans Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, over a dozen senate and congressional staff, and several members of congress.
Our main advocacy focus was asking for the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program of the National Park Service to be funded at the same level that was recently enacted for FY24 at the amount of $4.655 million. Since the amount was included in the President’s FY25 budget, this was an easy ask for congressional staffers and the members of congress whom we met with. While it will likely be some time until the FY25 budget is enacted, the current FY24 budget amount will provide ample funds for the 2024 JACS grant program. The RFP is expected sometime in late August or early September with an early November deadline.
An additional ask was to fund the Japanese American Confinement Education grant for the amount of $2 million in FY25. JACE was not included in the FY24 enacted budget, nor was it in the President’s FY25 draft budget. After our meetings, we are hopeful that JACE will be added into the final FY25 budget. In the interim, we expect an update from NPS sometime in the coming months about how exactly the JACE grant program will be rolled out this year, which will be funded with money that was unspent in other program areas during the previous fiscal year. Minidoka Lava Ridge Wind Farm and the Tule Lake Fence issues were also represented during our meetings by members of the Minidoka Pilgrimage Planning Committee and Tule Lake descendants.
In addition to the legislative advocacy visits, the JACSC meeting also served as the formal kick-off to our strategic planning. Over the next six months JACSC will be undergoing a strategic planning process that will both shape the direction of the consortium as an entity, and also challenge our many member organizations and Japanese American community members nationwide to think critically about the future of this work.
The conversation that began in DC will continue throughout the Spring/Summer months through a series of facilitated workshops, virtual community town halls, written surveys, one-on-one meetings, and informal conversations with consortium members and other stakeholders.
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