Sacramento Pacific Islanders dying from COVID + Donate to fight hate crimes: Your AAPI newsletter

It is Thursday, Feb. 18, and this is The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI weekly newsletter.

Here’s a recap of the stories I’ve covered and ones I’m following:

Sacramento’s Pacific Islanders have been sounding the alarm about how COVID-19 has affected their small community, watching in horror as many of their loved ones became infected and died over the last year. On Jan. 12, county public health officer Dr. Olivia Kasirye revealed that the COVID-19 fatality rate among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander residents in 2020 came to 4%, despite the community making up about 1% of the county’s population.

That’s nearly twice as high as the county average of 2.1%, and higher than any other race. And at about 142 positive cases per 100,000 residents, the infection rate is also much higher.

For such a small community, that’s astronomical. But for Sacramento’s Pacific Islander residents and community advocates, the news comes as little surprise.

“There was a funeral almost every other weekend,” said ‘Ofa Mann, president of the To’utupu’o e ‘Otu Felenite Association.

Pacific Islanders suffer from disproportionately high rates of conditions like cancer, respiratory disease, liver disease and diabetes, all of which make them more vulnerable to COVID-19 complications. They also tend to live in multigenerational households, meaning if one person gets infected, several families are immediately at risk.

It’s a problem that’s been caused in many ways by the U.S. itself. After World War II, the U.S. tested dozens of nuclear bombs on Pacific Islanders, destroying their crops and giving residents long-term health problems and birth defects while also denying them adequate health care.

Most of the deaths have been elders, meaning every death is more than the loss of a loved one — it’s also the loss of a piece of culture, of generational knowledge and traditions that dissipate before elders can pass it on.

“Is our rate going to be going up? Probably,” said Mona Foster, founder of Hui o’ Hawaii of Sacramento Inc. “If our seniors do not get help right away, you’re going to see a higher rate.”

In other news

• Ad sought ‘non Asian’ applicants for tech job in California. Company blames mixup (The Sacramento Bee)
• A Neighborhood In Transition: Sacramento’s Little Saigon Grapples With Culture And The American Dream (CapRadio News)
• ‘We are not targets’: Hundreds rally in SF to condemn violence against Asian-American community (ABC News)
• Chloé Zhao’s America (Vulture)
• Vaccination Hesitation: How the Lack of Access Affects Trust from the Pacific Islander Community (Hawai’i Public Radio)
• COVID Doesn’t Discriminate. But People Do. (Eater)
• S.F. police arrest man suspected of assaulting 83-year-old Asian man (San Francisco Chronicle)
• The Complicated Pride Of Native Hawaiians In The Military (Honolulu Civil Beat)
• A Pakistani-American Tale Upends Expectations Onscreen and in Life (The New York Times)
• Listen: A Year of Anti-Asian Violence (Slate)

This week

Hate crimes and violence against Asians in the U.S. have been on the rise this past year. It’s been difficult and painful to watch more and more of these crimes happening to our Asian elders and community members, people we may not know personally but whose pain we can feel like our own because they’re part of the community we belong to, that’s made us who we are.

Watching the number of hate crimes spike over the last year, I’ve often felt helpless, watching the sphere of things we can control freeze in place while the sphere of things we have no power over seems to expand without limit.

But there are still some things we can do. We can give our time, such as the Bay Area residents who are volunteering to accompany Asian elders to and from their daily errands. And, if we can afford it, we can help fund more efforts to address anti-Asian bias and keep our community members safe.

If you have the financial means, consider donating to some local organizations that have been putting in the work to combat anti-Asian stigma and violence and fighting for AAPI rights.

Here’s just a few California-based AAPI community organizations you can donate to. A nationwide list can be found here, and a list of resources for reporting hate crimes can be found here:

• Stop AAPI Hate
• Asian Pacific Environmental Network
• Asian Health Services
• Save Our Chinatowns
• Filipino Community Center
• Korean American Coalition of Los Angeles
• Chinatown Community for Equitable Development
• Southeast Asian Community Alliance Los Angeles
• API Equality Northern California

Got a story suggestion? Please reach out to me at awong@sacbee.com.

That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

Help us cover your community through The Sacramento Bee’s partnership with Report For America. Contribute now to help fund Ashley Wong’s coverage of the Asian American community, and also to support a new reporter who will cover Latino issues.

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