Vicci Wong

Vicci Wong, born Victoria Wong is a Chinese American activist and one of the six founding members of the Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), which played a key role in launching the Asian American movement (AAM) in the late 1960s and coining the term Asian-American. Wong is widely recognized for her early activism in labor organizing, racial justice, and pan-Asian political organizing. Along with Vicci Wong, three other activists were invited and the meeting would be considered AAPA's founding meeting. The formation of AAPA was significant as it led to the birth of the term Asian American, the common term to describe Asians at that time was Oriental which broadly and inaccurately described Asians as a monolithic group. "Asian American" was coined with the intent to curate a political identity that aimed to unify the diverse Asian ethnic backgrounds. Through unifying Asian Americans, it was more empowering to be united under one umbrella for activism and resistance.

AAPA's core value and emergence was marked by its time period within United States history. During the time of AAPA's creation the civil rights movement and global anti-imperialist as well as anti colonial struggle were reaching its peak. With the Vietnam War raging on, it was evident that the government was sending people of color (POC) to fight wars and spread imperialism without much care for their rights in the homeland. From its inception, AAPA swore to position itself in solidarity with groups such as the Black Panther Party and the United Farm Workers. The organization publicly denounced and criticized the US government for its involvement in Southeast Asia especially the input of Henry Kissinger, the then Secretary of State, who was a main contributor in organizing Operation Menu and several other bombing operations across Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. This action by Vicci Wong & AAPA aligned Asian Americans with the broader struggle of Third World Liberation movements.

Anti-Vietnam War Along with her fellow AAPA members, fellow Wong would try to empower the Asian American community to be more politicized and participate in activism work, actively confronting racism and imperialism on a global scale. As part of their activism work, AAPA created the "AAPA Newsletters" that were published and spread throughout the campus and eventually the nation. One of their key editors and contributors would be Wong. These newsletters provided updates about the war in Vietnam and they also proved to be a useful tool to create discourse and circulate ideas within other college campuses and communities. In the political climate of that time that was divided between Black and white, AAPA's purpose was to give Asian Americans a platform for their own activism instead of being observers of the events around them. Not long after other colleges began forming their own AAPA chapters laying the groundwork for Asian American activism in the future.

Montreal Conference In November 1968, four AAPA members would be invited to attend the Hemispheric Conference to End the War in Vietna m including Wong, in Montreal, Canada. The event was a conference that hosted 1500 delegates from 25 different countries that was centered around U.S. imperialism and their intervention in the Vietnam War, its purpose was to build solidarity against the war in Vietnam. Alongside AAPA, was the BPP's delegate Chairman Bobby Seale whom took a prominent role within the conference to speak out against anti-imperialism as a whole instead of the conference's anti-war stance. While his radical speech was met with opposition, AAPA members stood in solidarity with their his message and it allowed Wong to realize her fight in AAM. Through attending the conference, Wong felt that for once Asian American activists were seen as players on an international stage instead of being observers, they became the subject matters who others sought to seek guidance from. This shift bolstered AAPA to become a forefront of global anti-imperialism and it allowed for international solidarity to become a center of AAPA's core beliefs, which in turn became a crucial pillar for Asian American activism.

When the Afro-American Student of UC Berkeley, demanded the creation of the Black Studies Department, the Chancellor of UC Berkeley, Haynes, rejected their proposal. As a result, in solidarity with the AASU, AAPA would join the TWLF strikes. The student-led coalitions composed of Chicanos, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans, demanded the creation of a “Third World College” that would actively reflect their experiences and history of struggle within their institutions' curricula. Among the Asian American groups were students from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Central Valley and the four “core” groups of Asians were the Filipinos, Koreans, Japanese and Chinese. Through these protests Wong oversaw the solidarity between these student groups in the form of chants, marches, and overall commitment. Examples of solidarity included collaborations with AASU in creating chants and dances every morning. In addition, efforts by Chancellor Haynes of UC Berkeley to quell the protests included the immediate cancellation of mass rallies on campus, and anyone who partake in these rallies would be suspended from the UC. Nevertheless, Wong described how AAPA implemented the "serpentine march", which they adopted from Vietnam's guerrilla warfare tactics, to retaliate against this unjust rule. The "serpentine march" made it so that protestors would break up into smaller, adept groups to circumvent against the "mass rallies" criteria that was mentioned. The movement didn't highlight the role the US government played in creating the Asian American movement and why so many Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese immigrants were moving to the United States during the founding of the Asian American movement.

Wong has been an outspoken critic of historical revisionism surrounding the Asian American movement. She rejected depictions of AAPA as a spontaneous or apolitical development, arguing that such narratives disregard the intentionality and risk involved in the group’s formation. In a 2018 interview for the UC Berkeley Asian American Political Alliance Oral History Project, Wong expressed concern that the broadening of the Asian American label over time had obscured the historical role of U.S. imperialism in shaping refugee migration from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. She emphasized that understanding these political origins is crucial to grasping the full scope of Asian American activism. Through oral history interviews, archival identification, and public speaking, Wong has contributed to preserving the early history of AAPA and the Asian American movement. Her work has underscored the movement’s deep connections to the Black Panther Party and broader Third World solidarity networks. Scholars such as Diane C. Fujino have noted Wong’s significance in helping reframe the origins of Asian American Studies as rooted in radical political action and multiracial alliances. Outside of political organizing, Wong was active in the underground music scene in San Francisco during the 1980s. She was the lead singer of the punk rock band Repeat Offenders and continued to identify as a singer throughout her life. Her participation in punk music reflected her ongoing resistance to mainstream cultural norms and her belief in creative expression as a form of political engagement.

As the daughter of Chinese immigrants, Wong's life embodies the intersections of migration, community-based activism, and cultural resistance. Her legacy continues through her contributions to the documentation of activist history, the language of Asian American identity, and the institutionalization of Ethnic Studies.