Chinese Progressive Association

The Chinese Progressive Association is a grassroots community organization working for full equality and empowerment of the Chinese community in Greater Boston and beyond. Its members are mostly Chinese immigrants and Chinese speakers, many of them low-wage workers, working families or low-income elders. Rather than focusing on a single issue, CPA works across jobs, education, freedom from discrimination and a clean, safe living environment, involving ordinary residents in the decisions that affect their lives.

CPA was founded in 1977 out of organizing campaigns, including efforts to give Chinese parents a voice in Boston’s school desegregation process and to win community control over land development in Chinatown. Its record includes winning the first Chinese bilingual retraining programs in New England for dislocated garment workers, simultaneous interpretation at Boston public meetings, and affordable housing protections for hundreds of Chinatown households. It also runs voter education workshops and an annual block party.

What to Know

• CPA helped preserve Parcel C for community use, and the resulting Metropolitan building is its permanent home and organizing center.
• The group fought for more than a decade for the Low Income Fare program on public transit.
• It played a core role in launching the New Majority, a coalition of Boston’s communities of color, in 2003.
• Its annual banquet has drawn Boston city councilors and Mayor Michelle Wu, who presented an award there.