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Serious About Safety
What is real public safety—and who gets left out of the conversation?
In Episode 3 of Town Politics, hosts Pecolia Manigo and Chaney Turner of Oakland Rising Action dive headfirst into one of the most charged and misunderstood topics shaping our communities today: public safety.
Joining them is longtime East Oakland resident Alvina Wong 黃曉茵, the Base Building Director at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN). With over a decade of on the ground organizing experience, Alvina brings clarity, honesty, and vision to a conversation often clouded by fear and misinformation.
Together, they pull back the curtain on the narratives we’re sold—and the truths we rarely hear.Safety for whom? Implemented by whom? Defined by whom?And when you imagine your ideal neighborhood—what does safety feel like? Does our current system reflect that?
This episode challenges everything we think we know.Come ready to question. Come ready to imagine. Come ready to expand your definition of what safety could be, and what it should be.
About Our Guest:
Alvina Wong, Base Building Director of APEN - Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN). In her role, she supports strategy and capacity development for the local organizing projects in Oakland, Richmond and South Bay/Harbor Gateway Region of Los Angeles. Alvina builds member-led fights against pollution and displacement of low-income and working-class Asian immigrants and refugees while building their leadership within the environmental justice movement. They lead the teams in intergenerational organizing with somatic tools towards community governance and power at the neighborhood, city, and regional levels, and have led campaigns to stop evictions of SRO tenants and win major community benefits. Alvina began organizing in the Chinese immigrant community as an Eva Lowe Fellow at Chinese Progressive Association, San Francisco before starting as APEN Oakland’s community organizer in 2012. Prior to this, she spent eight years in youth development around education access and youth incarceration issues. Alvina loves baking, the Pacific Ocean and reading graphic novels.
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By Oakland Rising ActionWhat is real public safety—and who gets left out of the conversation?
In Episode 3 of Town Politics, hosts Pecolia Manigo and Chaney Turner of Oakland Rising Action dive headfirst into one of the most charged and misunderstood topics shaping our communities today: public safety.
Joining them is longtime East Oakland resident Alvina Wong 黃曉茵, the Base Building Director at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN). With over a decade of on the ground organizing experience, Alvina brings clarity, honesty, and vision to a conversation often clouded by fear and misinformation.
Together, they pull back the curtain on the narratives we’re sold—and the truths we rarely hear.Safety for whom? Implemented by whom? Defined by whom?And when you imagine your ideal neighborhood—what does safety feel like? Does our current system reflect that?
This episode challenges everything we think we know.Come ready to question. Come ready to imagine. Come ready to expand your definition of what safety could be, and what it should be.
About Our Guest:
Alvina Wong, Base Building Director of APEN - Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN). In her role, she supports strategy and capacity development for the local organizing projects in Oakland, Richmond and South Bay/Harbor Gateway Region of Los Angeles. Alvina builds member-led fights against pollution and displacement of low-income and working-class Asian immigrants and refugees while building their leadership within the environmental justice movement. They lead the teams in intergenerational organizing with somatic tools towards community governance and power at the neighborhood, city, and regional levels, and have led campaigns to stop evictions of SRO tenants and win major community benefits. Alvina began organizing in the Chinese immigrant community as an Eva Lowe Fellow at Chinese Progressive Association, San Francisco before starting as APEN Oakland’s community organizer in 2012. Prior to this, she spent eight years in youth development around education access and youth incarceration issues. Alvina loves baking, the Pacific Ocean and reading graphic novels.