Deborah Wei co-founded Asian Americans United in 1985 to organize low-income and working class Asian Americans; its victories include winning reform in the School District of Philadelphia for immigrant students and families improving language access across the city, tenant and worker organizing, and stopping the construction of a stadium and a casino in Philadelphia Chinatown. She was a founder and founding principal of the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, which serves as a model for best practices in serving immigrant and refugee families and a founder of the annual Philadelphia Chinatown Mid-Autumn Festival. She has been active in fighting displacement of Chinatown for over 40 years, most recently working to defeat a proposed basketball arena.
