'Find the thing that you're good at': UK alum, Lexington Vice Mayor Dan Wu offers advice for AAPI Kentuckians

LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 3, 2024) — Dan Wu is dynamic. He’s an artist and creator, a University of Kentucky art studio alum. Or, more colorfully, an alum of the former Reynolds Building “in all of its ramshackle glory,” as he fondly recalled in 2019, a space that became a quirky, quasi home to hundreds of UK art majors from 1960 until its recent material evolution as the Gray Design Building — a 21st-century, polycultural environment that preserves the kind of spirit only a building constructed in 1917 can provide.

Wu was a self-proclaimed misfit who honed his creative identity while in the College of Design, which shines through today in his various roles.  

Dan is a Chinese immigrant, a husband, a father, a trailblazer.  

He's a master chef and lover of the arts. An activist and proud Lexingtonian — a city “big enough to offer interesting and cool activities, but small enough to allow individuals to make a significant impact on their community.”  

His titles and means of service have changed over the years, and today, he’s an At-Large Council Member and Vice Mayor of Lexington.  

But above all, Dan is a Kentuckian. 

As we reflect on the recently concluded Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, UKNow caught up with Wu to learn more about his career, advocacy and community involvement.

UKNow: You’ve talked about your love of Lexington and its community. Can you tell me more about your involvement with organizations like LexArts, Human Rights Commission and CivicLex?  

Wu: I started to get involved in the community when I began my food career first as more of a private chef doing pop up events and things like that. And then with my restaurant Atomic Ramen. All along the way, I was very much connected to a lot of local nonprofits, and I would do a lot of “give back days” with the restaurants. So, everything from Glean Kentucky to Kentucky Refugee Ministries to Art on the Move to Greenhouse 17 — I mean, you name it. There are lots of really, really great organizations in Lexington to support. 

Coming out of COVID and after closing our brick-and-mortar restaurant down in 2020, I really started to reconsider kind of what I wanted to do with myself. More and more I wanted to get involved in either the government or nonprofit side. So, I started kind of, you know, nudging my way onto some boards like LexArts, CivicLex, the Kentucky Equal Justice Center and the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights. 

I started getting involved. Being on a board or a commission is a starter step into civic activism or into government or elected politics. You begin to understand where decisions are being made and how things work. Then that kind of indirectly led me into running for office. Even now on council and as vice mayor, I focus very much on being able to stay connected with a lot of nonprofits and activists and advocacy organizations — kind of helping open the door for them to have access to us as legislators and decision makers. I think that's really important. There are a lot of organizations out there that are just kind of doing it on their own and not understanding how to access where the decision making happens. So, I really want to help make that happen, because those are the folks that are the boots on the ground and have been doing a lot of great work in our community for a long time. 

UKNow: Speaking of advocacy, you helped create campaigns like “I Am A Kentuckian” and “Immigrants and Refugees Belong Here.” What inspired these initiatives? 

Wu: “I Am A Kentuckian” came about in 2016. I went to Frankfort with a group of folks, including Kentucky Refugee Ministries, where people were making speeches on Kentucky’s Capitol steps. One after the other they all said something to the effect of, “I am a Kentuckian.” 

And I thought to myself, “Well, I'm originally from somewhere else. I grew up here and I live here. I am a Kentuckian, and this is what a Kentuckian looks like.” 

That really resonated with me. And so, I gathered up a bunch of what I like to call “new Americans” because it encompasses immigrants, refugees and the children of those folks. So, I gathered up a bunch of new American folks who I knew and basically just had them look at the camera and say, for example, “My name is Dan. I am from China. I am a Kentuckian. 

It was just that message repeated over and over with all these different, beautiful faces of people in our community. And it was really a hearts and minds campaign to remind people that, “Hey, we've been here. We've been here this whole time. We are your friends, your neighbors, your favorite grocery store, your favorite restaurant your coworkers. We are people too.” It was really to counter what I was seeing as a toxic national rhetoric. 

“Immigrants and Refugees Belong Here" came about a couple of years later, really for the same reasons. I wanted to do another sort of hearts and minds campaign. And it started basically with creating a slogan and having a great local artist, Cricket Press, design a beautiful poster, and then applying for a grant to print more. Volunteers started knocking on business doors and saying, “Hey, will you put this in your window? Will you put this in your door?” Then that evolved into getting it printed on t-shirts — any money we made from any of these efforts went to Kentucky Refugee Ministries and Kentucky Equal Justice Center. Then the third and biggest round is we got them printed on big old banners and had them all over downtown. 

So, letting folks in Lexington know, these are our values, these are our people and we are accepting and welcoming. These folks belong here. We belong here. 

UKNow: You also helped start Lex Get HAAPI! a couple years ago. What was your vision for when you all were creating this grassroots group? How has it evolved?  

Wu: Well, basically, almost every year when May rolls around, I I look around in Lexington and realize there aren't a lot of events celebrating AAPI month, and last year around February I had that same thought again. I said, “Well, let's do something about it." And so I literally just gathered up a group of my really smart, passionate, capable friends and said, “Hey, can we create some events?”  

Last year, in the span of less than six or eight weeks, we created two events — a movie event where we showed "Everything Everywhere All At Once" (my favorite movie of all time) at the Kentucky Theatre, along with three performances. Then we had a gallery hop at the ArtsPlace. Those two events were really, really successful and drew out a lot of people. 

We gathered the group back up again, and we said, “Hey, let's take some time and really blow it out for 2024.” So, this year we had basically four weekends of events. We had a music and performance event, a poetry and tea event at (the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning) and another visual art and performance event at the Central Library (of the Lexington Public Library system). We capped it all off with a weekend full of movies at the Kentucky Theatre. 

We are coming off of that high right now of having pulled off all of these events. And again, just a big group of volunteers. Putting it all together. We’re really looking toward next year and future years now, in terms of how we can make this sustainable.  

UKNow: Why do you believe it's important to celebrate AAPI month and how do you see these celebrations contributing to that larger dialogue and celebration? 

Wu: Asian Americans, especially outside of California, New York and Hawaii, are kind of seldom seen. There are around 13,000 Asian Americans in Lexington. We're only, I think, 4 or 5% of the population. And you know, because of cultural things but also because of the kind of way American legislation has molded immigration patterns, we are really only now coming into the second to third generations of Asian American immigrants, right? Not counting the migrant workers who came for the gold mines and the railroads back in the day. 

So, you know, that first generation were kind of forced to put their heads down and just do the work and stay quiet. “Don't be politically active. Don't rock the boat.” Make a better life for their children. Well, here we are now, the children, the second generation, the third generation. We have that privilege of standing on our parents’ shoulders, and we're saying, “Hey, we understand this culture and this language better than our parents. And we want to make changes. We want to be seen. We want to be loud. We want to be celebrated. We want to be acknowledged.”  

I think a lot of these cultural celebrations puts in the forefront of realizing, “Oh, there are a lot of great Asian American artists in Lexington. There are a lot of great performers. There are hip hop dance troupes, a K Pop dance troupe. All of this culture and art that's happening." We're highlighting it. When I think about Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, I don't think about it like a history month, like, "let's look at the past." I really want to look at the present and the future of what already exists in Lexington. I think having that presence and being out front, and for me being the first Asian American elected official in Lexington — that's what I want to do. Kick down that door a little bit and change people's perception about who we are and who we can be. We're not just necessarily doctors and engineers or grocery store owners or restaurant workers. We can be really anything we want. But it takes, I believe, a concerted effort to show people that. 

UKNow: What are some of your most memorable Get HAAPI events or moments? 

Wu: One of the biggest takeaways I had was from last year. We were at the visual art event, and there were some performers, and I was looking around the room, blown away by the attendance. I didn't expect it. I thought, “Oh, it's going to be, maybe, just the family and friends of the performers.” But we had well beyond that, and we had community members coming out. I said to my friend, “Wow, I did not expect this kind of turnout.” And he leans into me and says, “Yeah, people have been waiting for this.” 

That blew me away because I didn't know we had been waiting for this, or I didn't know other people had been waiting for this — maybe not even knowing what they were waiting for. But now that it's here, everybody's like, “This is great. I want to support this.” So that was really heartening and motivated us to keep going. To know that the thing that we were so desperately missing in our small group really resonated with everyone else. It wasn't just us, and it wasn't just Asian Americans, even. It was other people who wanted to share and engage with this culture. More than any individual event, it was just that idea. And then we kept seeing that over and over again this year as well.  

UKNow: What advice do you have for other Asian Americans or young folks who aspire to become community leaders and advocates?  

Wu: Grow where you’re planted. Think about what you care about. Do you care about arts equity? Do you care about LGBTQ+ rights? Do you care about homelessness? Do you care about domestic violence? Do you care about food insecurity? 

Think about the thing that you already care about, and I can guarantee you there is at least one and maybe five nonprofits in Lexington that are working on that right now. Call them up — I'll bet you every single one of them will take your donations and take your time. Become a volunteer, join a board or a commission with the city itself — they are open and always looking, and especially looking for young people. 

Try some stuff out and don’t be afraid or deterred. I think, especially as an Asian American, it’s important to be able to think outside the box of what you think you can or can't be. And I believe in the idea that it's hard to be it when you can't see it. 

It was hard for me to think about, some years ago, being an elected leader in a place like Lexington, because we've just never seen it before, right? But this is a town that has had three women mayors, an openly gay mayor. This is a town that has a long, deep history, for example, of LGBTQ+ rights, a long history of accepting refugee communities. 

Lexington has a lot going for it. And it surprises people, I think, all the time. 

So, don’t be afraid to give it a shot. Don't be afraid to reach out to people in your community who are already established. Because those are the same folks who want to take other people under their wings, who want to convey the knowledge and wisdom that they have to others.  

Find the thing that you're good at, find the thing that you're passionate about, and I can almost guarantee you there's a there's a path to doing it.