Author and Executive Director of Brightline Defense -- an environmental justice nonprofit organization -- Eddie Ahn discussed the environmental advocacy illustrated in his comic book memoir, "Advocate" on Oct. 21. It was the MultiCultural Center's first educational event of the year.
According to their website, Brightline Defense is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting sustainability and opportunity for low-income communities affected by environmental pollutants through policy, on-the-ground partnerships and creating meaningful connections with the communities they work with.
"Advocate" was a physical way for Ahn to explain the role nonprofit work plays in his life and his idea of success to his family and readers with similar attitudes about nonprofit work, he said.
"I think for my family, when they came as immigrants to this country, this idea of achieving success, the so-called American dream...a lot of it was about climbing an economic ladder, or like literally ascending into a different class and society," Ahn said.
"I've used comics, in particular, as a way to try to tell complex stories in a way that lets the eye just linger on a page, and then the reader can choose whether or not they want to flip the page back, absorb the information, or just move on," Ahn said.
At the MultiCultural Center (MCC) Theater, Ahn conversed with UCSB's Asian American studies Chair Lisa Park about Ahn's choices in design and the ideas he wanted to express about nonprofit environmental work when creating "Advocate."
Ahn and Park expressed that they hoped the interview format of their discussion would encourage the audience to learn more about Ahn's personal and professional experience in nonprofit work. Approximately 40 audience members attended the event and participated in the discussion by asking questions to Ahn and Park.
Ahn said he utilized an "intersectional lens" to combine his personal experiences as a second-generation immigrant with an "artistic eye" to inform common public perceptions about non-profit work.
In "Advocate," Ahne said he uses colors to indicate specific periods of his life, moods and the passage of time, such as brown to represent the 2020 pandemic and blue to represent a calm state of mind. Ahn also said the comic book format and layout were important to his storytelling style.
Third-year environmental studies major Melina Axelrod attended the event after hearing about it in her Asian American studies class. She said she was interested in Ahn and Park's conversation about the book's structure and illustration.
"A lot of his work kind of looks like photos. So I was really interested [to know] if he draws from references, draws from a combination of memory and what ... inspires [him]," Axelrod said.
One of the messages Ahn sought to convey with his book was the conflict between finding success in non-profit environmental justice work and satisfying his family's expectations of his success.
"The question in the book that's always been brought up is, what is that success? Is it just financial success, or can it be done through other means?" Ahn said.
Ahn also discussed the role of nonprofits in America and said that while nonprofits could work "faster" than government agencies, their work should ultimately be done by the government.
"There are some advantages to it, that idea about being nimble, to be able to serve different leaders at the moment in a way that might be faster than, say, a government agency," Ahn said. "One larger thing I think about a lot with non-profit work is that it fills a function in American society that probably should be filled by the government at the end of the day."
While advocating for intersectionality and compassion in non-profit work, Ahn said there are shortcomings to climate justice within existing legal and economic frameworks. According to Ahn, systems that environmental nonprofits such as Brightline work within sometimes conflict with some of the goals of those smaller nonprofits.
"Constantly grappling with systems that we may not agree with, you know, [...] they're often institutions, corporate structures much larger than, my own nonprofit can topple," Ahn said.
Ahn said that those looking to enter his work in nonprofit environmental justice should start by finding a volunteering opportunity with resources behind it.
"Ideally it's always a learning experience, so you understand what you like about the work and then that helps hone down what you really want to do, ideally, later down your career, " Ahn said.