Tuk-tuks in Sacramento + Parolee goes from San Quentin to ICE custody: Your AAPI newsletter
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Happy holidays! It is Thursday, Dec. 26, and this is The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI weekly newsletter, brought to you by yours truly.
Here’s a recap on the stories I recently covered and issues I’m following:
Upon leaving San Quentin State Prison on Monday after serving a 22-year sentence, Tith Ton, a Cambodian American man who was granted parole, was immediately detained by a private security firm contracted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This means California Gov. Gavin Newsom did not stop San Quentin officials from cooperating with ICE. There are no state law that requires state prisons to work with ICE. Last week, ICE notified Ton they plan to detain him upon his parole.
For this week’s AAPI businesswomen series, I spoke with Manushi Weerasinghe, founder of Capital Tuk-Tuk, an eco-friendly tour company that aims to bring the tuk-tuks, a three-wheeled vehicle commonly found in Asia, to Sacramento. Weerasinghe, 29, shared with The Sacramento Bee how she founded the idea and pushed limits to make it happen.
In other news, SF Weekly also wrote about Ton’s situation. Advocates called on Gov. Newsom to stop his potential deportation. The article includes the account of Ton’s sister, who gives more detail about Ton’s childhood and traumas as he experienced loss and grew up in an underserved neighborhood in the United States.
Researchers at Stanford say the “Asian glow” gene linked to progression of Alzheimer’s, NBC News reports. Approximately 560 million individuals of East Asian descent carry a mutated version of an enzyme that leads to “Asian glow” – a flush-red face after drinking. It could lead to accelerated development of Alzheimer’s.
Also from NBC News, the New York Police Department is cultivating more Asian American leaders. In the NYPD, Asian Americans placed last in representation among all racial groups for officers ranked captain or higher. They often join the force as first-generation officers and might lack any family legacy or embedded police culture. There’s a program that aims to change that.
Mitsuye Endo fought the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in the Supreme Court case that forced the government to free thousands 75 years ago, The Washington Post reports.
Listen to this story by NPR For Central California on a Hmong Arts and Media Festival that examines the role of the arts in healing, in light of last month’s mass shooting in Fresno that left four Hmong men dead.
Finally: What do you want to read about on Sacramento or California’s AAPI population? Send your thoughts to me at tyu@sacbee.com.
That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Thank you for reading!
Theodora Yu covers Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in California for The Sacramento Bee. She is a member of Report for America’s 2019 corps of journalists.