#IAmAsianAmerican: Get Your Eat On, Get Your Beat On, & Get Out The Vote

This weekend’s national #IAmAsianAmerican concerts take place on Sunday, October 16, in four cities (New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles). The campaign is a great opportunity to get registered to vote, and also get free concert tickets. #IAAA aims to register 15,000 new AAPI voters nationwide through the events offering food trucks and artist performances.

Uyen Tieu is a key figure behind the #IAmAsianAmerican campaign. She spoke with NBC News Asian America about how the concerts developed and how she got interested in mobilizing Asian American voters, especially millennials:

I found out that half of Asian Americans don’t vote, and I was like, ‘Okay, that’s low,’ but then I found out that only 36 percent of Asian-American millennials vote, and I was completely surprised…

Tieu — who is a former vice president of strategy at MTV — and her sisters continued to bounce ideas off each other about how to best mobilize the Asian-American millennial vote.

“We thought maybe we should do something about food, because Asian Americans spend 40 percent more than the average American on going out to eat,” Tieu said. “And we thought when it comes to millennials, we should do something more, like a concert.”

For more eye-opening stats on Asian American voters, watch one of the campaign’s PSAs:

https://youtu.be/dR9SoSqHBKc

RSVP soon for the chance to get your eat on and your beat on while getting the vote out, Asian American style. Free tickets for the October 16 concerts are limited, though at the time of posting all four cities still have tickets available. (Reserve tickets through the links at the end of this post.)

The lineups for the flagship concert at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, and for the concerts in NYC, Chicago, and D.C. feature Asian American artists, including desi artists Parvesh Cheena, Seti X, Shilpa Narayan, and Prateek Srivastava. The events will also be livestreamed, details to be shared on @soasianamerican.

Singer-songwriter Shilpa Narayan, who will be performing at the NYC concert, explained why she wanted to be part of this voter mobilization campaign: “As a young South Asian American, I wanted to give a message of empowerment to all my fans, and especially to all the girls out there that look like me, to see how strong we can be when we unite and speak up!”