Please join Asian Americans for Equality on Thursday, March 21, 2019 in Manhattan's Chinatown for our 45th Annual Lunar New Year Banquet.

A cherished tradition, AAFE's banquet is an evening of good food and lively conversation shared by more than 800 friends and community supporters. This year, we will not only be celebrating the Year of the Pig, but also our 45th year serving New York City's Asian American community.

Single tickets and full tables are available. Your participation helps AAFE provide critical programs -- including affordable housing, small business loans and immigrant advocacy -- all year long.

You can purchase online tickets here, or call Jessica Liu at 212-299-0531. Send us an email at: aafebanquet@aafe.org.

Sponsorship packages are available.

Meet our DREAM OF EQUALITY Honorees:

Gregg Bishop has been commissioner at SBS since November of 2015, and has worked at the agency since 2008. Under his leadership, the city’s small business office has been focused on promoting self sufficiency and equal opportunity in New York’s many diverse neighborhoods. AAFE affiliate, Renaissance Economic Development Corporation, has worked closely with SBS to further these goals on behalf of immigrant, low-income and minority entrepreneurs citywide. As the New York Times noted in a recent profile, Bishop has, “certified a record number of minority- and women-owned businesses, and expanded (SBS) to better serve immigrant entrepreneurs.” He’s an adjunct professor at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs and board president of a nonprofit, the Red Hook Initiative. Bishop was born in Grenada and grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. He previously worked at NPower, a nonprofit that provides tech skills training for people in underserved communities; Oxygen Media; The Street.com and VIBE Magazine.

Jin Park is a graduate of Harvard College (2018) where he studied biology and government. Park was recently elected as a Rhodes Scholar from District 3 (NY-South) and will be pursuing a doctorate in political theory at the University of Oxford. He is the first recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to win the prestigious award. Park, 22, came to this country from South Korea at the age of 7. He grew up in Flushing, Queens. Park’s mother worked in a beauty salon and his father was a line cook in a Korean restaurant. In a moving editorial published earlier this year in The New York Times, Park called his scholarship bittersweet, writing, ”the Trump administration rescinded the option for overseas travel for those with DACA status, the Dreamers who were brought to this country illegally as children. This means that when I leave the country in October to study at Oxford with my fellow Rhodes scholars, I may not be able to come back.” During college, Park led several direct service programs providing naturalization assistance and college access to immigrant communities. He also worked as a fellow at the New York City Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs to help implement "ActionHealthNYC," the precursor demonstration program to Mayor de Blasio's recently launched "NYC Care" program.

At this year’s banquet, Yee Ling Poon will be presented with our Lifetime Achievement Award. One of AAFE’s founding members and a former president of the organization, Poon is a dedicated immigration attorney in New York City. Last year, Poon successfully represented Xiu Qing You, a Queens resident who faced deportation after trying to attend a green card interview. Back in the 1970s, Poon was a member of Basement Workshop, and founded the Chinese Historical Society (now Museum of Chinese in America) to preserve the oral history and artifacts of Chinese immigrants. She has led many activist campaigns, including the fight for Chinese-American representation on New York City’s school board, demonstrations against police brutality and demands for government accountability after the closing of a community bank, Golden Pacific National Bank.

In January of this year, Jessica Ramos was sworn in as a state senator, representing District 13 in Queens, which includes the neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, Corona, East Elmhurst, Woodside and Astoria. A longtime community activist, she’s chair of the Committee on Labor and a steadfast defender of immigrant rights. Ramos was born in Elmhurst, Queens to an undocumented seamstress and a printing pressman from Colombia. She worked with several labor groups, including Build Up NYC, SSEU Local 371 and 32BJ SEIU. Ramos served on Queens Community Board 3 and was a district leader. She was Director of Latino Media for the City of New York. Last year, Ramos was elected to serve her community in the State Legislature.