Since 2016, the W.O.W. Project has been organizing from the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown, using the arts to resist displacement and create a future that nurtures the self-determination and leadership of women, queer, and trans Asian diasporic youth.
The Year of the Snake, associated with wisdom, adaptability, and transformation, often reveals injustices we must confront. With the combination of wood and fire, the year of 2025 calls us to illuminate Chinatown’s past to seed its future.
The erosion of Chinatown’s small business ecosystem didn’t begin with the COVID-19 pandemic—it’s a story rooted in decades of systemic neglect. In 2001, a Metal Snake year, the 9/11 attacks were devastating, but the carceral state’s response—in the name of "security"—was equally destructive. Just ten blocks from Ground Zero, Chinatown still lives in the weight of 9/11’s aftermath: the NYPD’s militarization of Park Row, once a major thoroughfare to Chinatown. Chinatown’s community—from small business owners to healthcare workers, churches, and schools—fought against the city’s land grab and police check points. Despite the uncertain pathways for redress, our neighbors stood together to protect Chinatown.
Twenty-four years—two zodiac cycles—later, as we enter another Year of the Snake, Chinatown is still wrestling with militarization, gentrification, and displacement. To compound these challenges, a mega-jail is now proposed in Chinatown—a towering monument to the carceral state’s ongoing neglect. Once again, the city exploits immigrant and working-class communities, draining resources to expand its carceral infrastructure while withholding essential social services as leverage to impose a jail deal on Chinatown.
Just as the Wood Fire Snake spirit reminds us, every challenge holds the spark of transformation. In 2025, The W.O.W. Project envisions a future of abundance, safety, and reciprocity—a future without jails. We are committed to continuing our unique intergenerational, art-based approach to mutual aid and abolitionist organizing for many lunar new years to come—and we need you in this work!
Your contribution is a powerful act of Lunar New Year communal love tradition. Every donation directly nurtures programs like From Chinatown, With Love and Resist Recycle Regenerate, sustains small business mutual aid, grows Asian American youth leaders, and strengthens our fight against gentrification and displacement!
This Lunar New Year, add your energy to this transformation and help us light the way forward:
