Sacramentan hired to caucus + Over 1,600 anti-Asian incidents in CA: Your AAPI newsletter

It is Thursday, March 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:

Stephanie Tom, a Sacramento native and longtime AAPI community worker, has been hired as the new chief consultant for the California Asian & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, the APILC announced last Wednesday.

Tom began her state service career as the deputy director for strategic planning, broadband and digital literacy at the California Department of Technology and has more than 20 years of experience working with local API organizations. She currently serves on the board of directors for Asian Resources, Inc., as an advisory board member for My Sister’s House and has worked with the California Asian Chamber of Commerce and on the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs steering committee.

“I’m really excited ... really honored to be part of something that will help us move the needle,” Tom said.

One of her first priorities will be to help APILC mobilize the heightened public awareness of anti-Asian racism into fuel to create legislative protections, such as AB 85 or AB 557. Recent months have seen a nationwide rise in anti-Asian violence and hate incidents, especially in the Bay Area.

Tom said her parents exposed her to the possibility of AAPI political leadership from a young age, especially because of her mother, Maeley Tom, who became the first woman and first ethnic minority to serve as the California State Assembly’s chief administrative officer. Though working for AAPI community advocacy was something Tom had been interested in since middle school, she didn’t become formally involved in activism work until she attended Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.

“It really opened my eyes to what the API community can do if we truly understand it and embrace it,” Tom said.

The Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center received 1,691 reports of anti-Asian discrimination in California between March 2020 and February this year, according to data released Tuesday.

Nationwide, from March 19, 2020 to Feb. 28 this year, 3,795 incidents of anti-Asian racism were self-reported to the center, ranging from verbal abuse to physical assault and being refused service for being Asian. About 44.56% of those reports were from California.

“Hate incidents are not abating,” Russell Jeung, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, said in a statement. “We cannot let anti-Asian American hate be a legacy of COVID-19 or the last presidential administration, but that’s exactly what will happen unless we demand concrete action.”

Anonymous reports ranged from people being yelled at and followed in grocery stores to people being spat on and finding graffiti with racial slurs outside their businesses. One report from Elk Grove occurred during a protest, the study said.

“A white man driving a silver Mercedes drove past the first wave of Asian protesters yelling out of his window at them, ‘Stupid f------ Asians!’” the anonymous Elk Grove report stated. “Afterwards, he drove to where the remaining Asian protesters stood and was witnessed by multiple protesters aggressively driving onto the walkway where several protesters were gathered. Several elderly Hmong women jumped out of the way. An 8-year-old boy,who stood in the path of the oncoming vehicle, was startled into action and quickly moved out of the way towards safety.”

In other news

• ’Disappointing’ 2020 Latino turnout found in new analysis. Youth voting also lagged (The Sacramento Bee)
• ‘A crime against us all.’ Outrage, grief after deadly spa shootings (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
• An Asian American chef slammed Texas for lifting its mask mandate. Then racist graffiti hit his shop. (The Washington Post)
• Writer defends using the term ‘bamboo ceiling’ to describe the breakthroughs Asian-American actors are making at the Oscars (Insider)
• Teen Vogue: controversy continues after editor-in-chief apologizes for anti-Asian tweets (The Guardian)
• Chinese Truck Drivers Face Extra Barriers Finding Mental Health Care (Documented)
• Pacific Islanders, Including Hawaiians, Disproportionately Missing Out On Vaccines (Honolulu Civil Beat)

• Women of Asian Descent Were 6 of the 8 Victims in Atlanta Shootings (The New York Times)

• How Chinese Dramas Helped Me Build a Relationship With My Sister (The New York Times)

This week

Three of the six Asian women who were killed in the Atlanta spa shootings this week were released Wednesday evening. Their names were Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, Xiaojie Tan, 49 and Daoyou Feng, 44.

In times of terrible, tragic news, it can be easy to turn inward, to wallow in despair. But these are the times when it’s most important for us to reach out and rely on our communities for help and support.

To that end, if you have the means, here are a few California-area organizations working for the AAPI community that you can consider donating to. Here’s a nationwide list as well.

• Save Our Chinatowns
• Korean Immigrant Workers Alliance
• Asian Immigrant Women Advocates
• Hmong Innovating Politics
• Filipino Community Center
• Chinatown Community Development Center
• Little Tokyo Service Center
• Alliance of South Asians Taking Action

And if you’re looking for some emotional support, or just need someone to talk to, the Asian American Journalists’ Association has put together a great list of mental health resources for AAPI folks.

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 stay safe. See you next week.

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This story was originally published March 17, 2021 at 7:48 PM.