The lawsuit also contradicts many of the accusations Tesla made against the DFEH. The EV maker said that, “at a time when manufacturing jobs are leaving California, the DFEH has decided to sue Tesla instead of constructively working with us.” Tesla said that was “both unfair and counterproductive, especially because the allegations focus on events from years ago.” The Californian agency has a very different story to tell.

According to the lawsuit, DFEH “attempted to resolve this matter without litigation.” The Californian agency said it “invited Tesla to participate in a mediation session with the department’s internal dispute resolution division on January 12 and 20, 2022, but Tesla refused to attend until February 8, 2022.”

On February 7, 2022, “Tesla announced the DFEH investigation for the first time during the three-year investigation in its Securities and Exchange Commission Form 10-K.” On February 8, “the parties were unable to resolve the administrative complaints at the mediation.”

On February 9, Tesla published a blog post complaining about the Californian agency, implying it could leave the state for good due to that. The DFEH lawsuit was filed on the same day. It states it happened on February 9, 2021, which was clearly a typo.

The way DFEH puts it, it seems Tesla did everything it could to have a legal battle while pretending it did not want it. Considering the DFEH would not lie about a mediation session, the behavior Tesla presented in this case looks not only elusive, but also incredibly unwise to put it in political terms.

Owen Diaz won a lawsuit against Tesla for racial harassment and discrimination. A San Francisco jury ruled he should receive $6.9 million for emotional distress and $130 million for punitive damages. Tesla is now fighting to reduce the punitive damages award in courts. Confronted with the Californian agency’s lawsuit, the court may decide it was a fair value. And Tesla may have to pay even more if the Superior Court of California decides the DFEH’s allegations are correct.

The cases would also not be from years ago, as Tesla said. The company stated the DFEH “has been asked on almost 50 occasions by individuals who believe they were discriminated against or harassed to investigate Tesla.” According to the EV maker, it would have concluded all investigations “without a finding of misconduct against Tesla.” The DFEH denies that.

In its lawsuit, it said that “after approximately three years of investigation, receiving hundreds of complaints from workers and serving many to Tesla, DFEH issued a cause finding on January 3, 2022.” In other words, the investigation started around 2019 and ended very recently.

Summing up, we’re talking about hundreds of complaints, of which only some may have been served to Tesla. That’s probably why the company concluded that they were only “almost 50” instead of way more than that.

It is not clear why DFEH served only a few to Tesla nor why it issued only one cause finding to deal with hundreds of complaints. Perhaps a single, more general one was all it took, but we’d need to confirm that with the DFEH. We have sent a few questions to the Californian agency. All we received back was a copy of the lawsuit.

It shows the DFEH seems to have had enough with Tesla’s behavior. It states that “Mr. Musk is infamous for taking positions that run counters to those of other car companies, technology companies, billionaires and workers.” It also notes that “Tesla’s brand, purportedly highlighting a socially conscious future, masks the reality of a company that profits from an army of production workers, many of whom are people of color, working under egregious conditions.”

A little further ahead, the lawsuit shows a pretty grim working environment in Fremont. The DFEH did not expose the identity of the workers that complained about racism there or identified the people that perpetrated the multiple racial insults. They are only identified as “DOES ONE through FIFTY,” meaning that the DFEH “will amend this complaint to allege their true names and capacities when the same are ascertained.”

The DFEH does not spare the details of what African American workers go through “throughout the day, every day” at Fremont. Some of them claim to hear racial insults 50 to 100 times a day.

They include “the n-word, ‘porch monkey,’ ‘monkey toes,’ ‘boy,’ ‘hood rats,’ and ‘horse hair.’” African American workers also heard insults in Spanish, such as “mayate” (equivalent to the n-word or to calling someone gay, depending on the context) and “negrita” (little black woman).

They also hear racist jokes such as “n-word out of the hood,” “from the ghetto,” “Tesla [was] hiring lazy coons,” and “go back to Africa.” DFEH also says that the factory is racially segregated, which allegedly causes areas with a majority of African American workers to be referred to as “porch monkey station,” “slaveship,” or “the plantation,” where the management would “crack the whip .”

The environment in Fremont is described as threatening to African Americans. They see “swastikas, ‘KKK,’ the n-word, and other racist writing” onto “walls of restrooms, restroom stalls, lunch tables, and even factory machinery.” “One Black worker observed ‘hang N[ ]’ penned next to a drawing of a noose in the breakroom restroom. This worker also saw ‘all monkeys work outside’ and ‘f[ ] N[ ]’ on the breakroom walls.”

Workers with Confederate flag tattoos allegedly exhibit them proudly to try to start a fight with African Americans. If any altercation emerges, the latter are punished more severely, which can include even terminations. The same would not happen to the employees provoking the African American workers.

The DFEH also accuses Tesla of employing African American people in “more physically demanding posts and the lowest-level contract roles.” Tesla would also pay them less and prevent them from “advancement opportunities.” There are reports of “only Black and/or African American workers cleaning the factory floor on their hands and knees,” something no other group of employees allegedly had to endure.

The Californian agency even traced a racial profile of Tesla workers. According to it, “Black and/or African American workers make up 0% of executives and about 3% of professionals at the Fremont plant.” On the other hand, “about 20% of the factory operatives, such as engine and other machine assemblers, are Black and/or African American.”

The issue is that the DFEH did not do its homework as it should. It also states in the lawsuit that “segregation at the Fremont factory, along with the absence of Black and/or African Americans in leadership roles, has left many complaints of rampant racism unchecked for years.” The Californian agency either completely forgot about Valerie Capers Workman, Tesla’s former vice president of people, or tried to exempt her from responsibility to reinforce the narrative that an African American executive could have prevented racism.

Workman is African American and she worked for Tesla for four years. She became the company’s vice president of people in July 2020. If she did not do anything about the “systematic racial discrimination and harassment” in her one year and seven months as the main human resources executive at the company, there are only two possible explanations for that: either Workman did not think there was anything wrong, or she could not do anything about it.

When Diaz won his lawsuit against Tesla on October 4, 2021, Workman’s email to employees ended up as a Tesla blog post as well. It is still online and states that she “strongly” believed that “these facts don’t justify the verdict reached by the jury in San Francisco.” Workman also said Diaz was not a Tesla employee – as if what happened to him inside Fremont was less severe due to being a contract worker – and that “he didn’t make any complaints about the n-word until after he was not hired full -time by Tesla – and after he hired an attorney.”

The DFEH lawsuit presents 13 causes of action against Tesla. Summing them up, they have to do with racial harassment, racial discrimination in the work environment (leading to worse employment conditions for African Americans), retaliation against those who complained, and fail to keep records of complaints.

The DFEH is asking Tesla to be judged by a jury. If convicted, the Californian agency wants the EV maker to pay:

1. Compensatory and punitive damages;
2. Economic damages and equitable relief (…);
3. Liquidated damages and penalties as required by law;
4. Injunctive relief;
5. Declaratory relief;
6. Prejudgment interest, as required by law;
7. Attorneys’ fees and costs to the Department of Fair Employment and Housing; other
8. Other relief the Court deems to be just and proper

That can represent a significant financial blow to Tesla, even worse than that caused by the Owen Diaz case. After all, we are now talking about “hundreds” of complaints with really serious reports of racial harassment and discrimination. That’s something Tesla and its investors have to worry about.

For us, what is more shocking is having to imagine anyone working every day in a hostile environment such as the one described by the DFEH lawsuit. If that is really how things are there, the quality problems Tesla vehicles suffer finally have a convincing – and pretty sad – explanation.

The post DFEH Racism Lawsuit Accuses Tesla of Shifting to Texas to Keep away from Accountability appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Posted by Rachel Trent | CNN

A 75-year-old Asian woman who was attacked on the street is taking the nearly $ 1 million donated for her medical bills and using it to fight racism, her family says.

After Xiao Zhen Xie was slapped in the face in an unprovoked attack in San Francisco on March 17th, she hit herself back. “He harasses old people,” Xie said in a video that was filmed after the attack by CNN subsidiary KPIX. “So I struck.”

After the attack, Xie suffered from two black eyes, a swollen wrist, and post-traumatic stress disorder that made her too scared to leave her home, according to a GoFundMe page her family set up to raise money for medical bills .

GoFundMe raised more than $ 930,000 within a week of the attack. The original target was $ 50,000.

Now her family says Xie wants the money to go to the Asian American community to fight racism and say the problem is bigger than her, according to the online fundraiser.

The site also says that Xie’s mental and physical health has improved. Now she can open her injured eye and is “in a better mood”.

Anti-Asian attacks are increasing

San Francisco police said a 39-year-old man assaulted an 83-year-old Asian man and was followed by a security guard when he beat Xie.

The suspect was taken to the San Francisco County Jail and was due to appear in court later this month.

After the attack, police said investigators are “working to determine whether bias is a motivating factor”.

San Francisco Police have stepped up patrols in predominantly Asian neighborhoods after “an alarming spike in brazen anti-Asian violence in recent weeks” in the Bay Area, the ministry said.

Anti-Asian attacks have increased dramatically in the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic. Stop AAPI Hate group says it received more than 500 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents in the first two months of 2021.

The CNN Wire
& © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia company. All rights reserved.

The post Aged Asian lady assaulted in San Francisco plans to donate virtually $1 million to battle racism appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

SAN FRANCISCO – Mandy Rong was terrified her 12-year-old daughter had COVID-19. It was 2 a.m. and the young girl was hours into a fierce fever and a racking cough. She was weak and didn’t want to eat. What few medications were on hand had expired. She sipped warm water instead.

“Mommy, why are my eyes on fire?” asked Amy Rong.

The mother and daughter, along with Rong’s parents, live in an 80-square-foot windowless single-room-occupancy Chinatown building that is a home of last resort for many impoverished Asian immigrants. Hallways are cramped, bathrooms and kitchens are communal. A ripe setting for the spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus. 

That early March night felt endless. Rong, 42, repeatedly touched Amy’s forehead, wondering if her child would die in the small loft that the two shared. Down below, her father slept on the floor while her mother took the lone sofa bed. The grandparents were eager for updates on Amy’s fever, but they worried their whispers would wake her. 

In the morning, the fever had vanished, only to return a week later. Once again, the family endured a restless night. Rong made soup, but Amy wouldn’t eat it. She cooked porridge and spoon-fed it to her daughter. 

Getting tested for COVID-19 didn’t seem like an option for the Rongs. The rumor was that the tests were expensive. Rong also feared the reaction from neighbors.

“If you test positive, everyone would be scared of you,” said Rong. “Everyone would think you are the devil.”

It is easy to mistake San Francisco for a thriving Asian American haven. The city, which is its own county, boasts a bustling Chinatown, as well as a popular Japantown. Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, Vietnamese, Indians and Filipinos also have made their homes here. All told, Asians in San Francisco represent upward of 20 countries. 

But many Asian American immigrants in the county lead a fragile existence rendered even more precarious with the arrival of COVID-19. So far, 38% of the 123 COVID-19 deaths reported by the San Francisco Department of Public Health are Asian American residents, the most of any ethnicity.

COVID-19 has taken a toll on Asian American communities in San Francisco

Lack of government support and information has caused COVID-19 cases to rise in Asian American communities in San Francisco.

Harrison Hill, USA TODAY

Experts also are concerned that positivity rates among Asian Americans in San Francisco could be far higher than the 12% reported, a by-product of the decades-in-the-making model minority myth, which characterizes this ethnic group as financially successful, physically healthy and upwardly mobile. This belief has caused segments of the Asian American community to long be overlooked when it comes to social services for housing, employment and health. 

San Francisco is one of the few places in the nation tracking data on Asian Americans and COVID-19 deaths at a time when officials don’t know the ethnicity of the person affected in nearly half of the nation’s 7.8 million coronavirus cases. Around 17 million Americans are of Asian descent, or 5.6% of the population.

In many cases, Asian Americans in this city have received imprecise or no information in their native language about testing, safety tips, housing and other critical care services during the pandemic. At the same time, the community is struggling with inadequate access to comprehensive health care, the need to keep front-line employment and growing incidents of anti-Asian hate crimes.

“This model minority thing, that’s not us,” said Judy Young, executive director of the Southeast Asian Development Center, a San Francisco nonprofit that helps area residents from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. She said 80% of her clients have lost their mostly service industry jobs during the pandemic. 

“There is the language barrier and our community is small,” Young said. “So the city doesn’t think we have any problems when we do.”

So the city doesn’t think we have any problems when we do. – Judy Young, executive director of the Southeast Asian Development Center https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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Judy Young, executive director of the Southeast Asian Development CenterThere is the language barrier and our community is small. So the city doesn’t think we have any problems when we do.

That risk of invisibility is only heightened by the pandemic. Since city health officials do not break down COVID-19 statistics beyond “Asian American,” many advocates for the city’s various groups said they are left to speculate about coronavirus infection and death rates within their individual communities. How many people are dying, and are those people Japanese Americans? Vietnamese? Korean? Filipino? No one knows. 

“There’s this feeling that there’s excess death out there,” said Jeffrey Caballero, executive director of the nonprofit Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations. “That high mortality rate among Asian Americans means either there isn’t enough testing or people are waiting far too long to get care.”

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Sources: COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2018 U.S. American Community Survey. Milken Institute Research Department COVID-19 Community Explorer. Data last updated: Sept. 1, 2020.

Xing Tam’s mother tested positive for COVID-19 in March. Her symptoms were mild. Medical officials told her to quarantine at home and avoid others. 

Suddenly, the working class Bayview district home where Tam, his mother and 17 other relatives and friends live together became uncomfortably crowded. Tam’s mother was given one of the three-story home’s 12 rooms. For weeks, everyone in the two-story house feared they would be next. 

As his mother recovered, Tam, 39, fretted about the cost of health care if he got sick. He worried the doctors wouldn’t be able to speak to him in words he could understand. 

Before the pandemic, life had started to improve for Tam. Five years ago, San Francisco relatives urged him to leave China’s Guangdong Province and try his luck in the U.S. He learned some English and landed a job at a hotel in catering. But when COVID-19 hit, his job vanished. 

The cost of housing in San Francisco is so expensive, his family has no option but to live together.

“Even if I test positive, I feel there is nothing the government will do to help me more,” he said. “I can see why some people look at Asians here and feel we are all well-off because we work hard and save whenever we can. But for many of us, it’s very challenging.”

But for many of us, it’s very challenging. – Xing Tam https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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Xing TamEven if I test positive, I feel there is nothing the government will do to help me more. I can see why some people look at Asians here and feel we are all well-off, because we work hard and save whenever we can. But for many of us, it’s very challenging.

For many Asian Americans in San Francisco, the high rate of COVID-19 deaths is directly linked to the corrosive and distorting effects of the model minority myth, said Dr. Tung Nguyen, a University of California, San Francisco professor of medicine.

Nguyen co-authored a report in May by the Asian American Research Center on Health that called attention to the fact that 50% of San Francisco’s 31 COVID-19 deaths at that time were among Asian Americans, disproportionately high considering they make up just over a third of the population.

Although that percentage has since dropped, Nguyen said a lack of detailed data about Asian Americans often means that city funds aren’t allocated to this group.  

“The truth is we are the ones who lose out as a result of this stereotype,” he added.

To be sure, the fortunes and contributions of many Asian Americans have skyrocketed in past decades. The median annual income of households headed by the nation’s 22 million Asian Americans is $73,060, compared with $53,600 for all U.S. households, according to the Pew Research Center.

But these success stories obscure the troubling reality facing many Asian Americans.

“You simply cannot look at Asian Americans as a monolithic group because if you do that, you’re going to miss how different communities experience the pandemic,” said Jarvis Chen, a lecturer in social and behavioral sciences at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Massachusetts.

A closer look at San Francisco’s two dozen Asian ethnicities reveals many groups within this broad categorization are struggling financially and remain outside the mainstream. About 43% are non-English speakers, according to a USA TODAY analysis of U.S. census data. About a third of San Franciscans are foreign-born, and 13% are not U.S. citizens. 

“With Asian Americans, the average always is pulled way up by those doing very well, which means you miss the groups who clearly are not,” said Margaret Simms, a nonresident fellow with The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., who specializes in race and labor economics. The think tank found nearly 13% of Asian American senior citizens live in poverty compared to a 9% national average.

you miss the groups who clearly are not. – Margaret Simms, non-resident fellow with The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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Margaret Simms, non-resident fellow with The Urban Institute in Washington, D.C.With Asian Americans, the average always is pulled way up by those doing very well, which means you miss the groups who clearly are not.

Discrimination also is keeping some Asian Americans from getting tested for COVID-19. The website Stop AAPI Hate, the acronym for Asian American Pacific Islander, has logged more than 2,500 incidents of discrimination across the U.S. since mid-March. The attacks have ranged from verbal assaults to acts of physical violence.

When Asian Americans hear President Donald Trump, who contracted COVID-19 in October, repeatedly call the virus the “China virus” and “Kung Flu,” “it makes them less likely to seek help, a bit like early in the AIDS epidemic when the gay community was stigmatized,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside and chair of the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs. “We fear many Asian American families have gone underground.”

Chinese citizens began passing through San Francisco’s then bridgeless Golden Gate en masse during the Gold Rush of 1849. By 1851, some 25,000 had arrived, lured by the hope of riches in a land called Gum Saan in Cantonese, or “gold mountain.” 

By the late 1800s, the Chinese were not just vilified but outright barred from entering the country, with few exceptions, by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. White officials charged they were taking jobs from other Americans, despite having been integral to the Gold Rush’s boom and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.

At the height of World War II, Japanese Americans around the country were rounded up and sent to internment camps, feared as the traitorous “yellow peril” after years of citizenship. Despite painful and humiliating treatment at the hands of the U.S. government, many Asians resolved to engrain themselves in the society at large with an image of themselves as patriotic, hardworking Americans. Japanese Americans were among the most decorated U.S. soldiers during the war, and others excelled in academics and commerce.

The model minority image gained momentum during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Asian American success stories were highlighted by white U.S. officials both as a way of signaling to other nations, namely the Soviet Union, that America was not racist, but also to shame other ethnic groups, notably Black Americans.

The logic went that if Asian Americans were doing so well, surely failure on the part of other ethnic groups was their own fault.

Then came the Vietnam War, a quagmire that resulted in a U.S.-sponsored evacuation of 125,000 refugees followed by countless others who escaped Southeast Asia in rickety boats. Many landed in San Francisco.

“The stereotype about us is broad and includes the notion that we’re all studious, we don’t get into trouble and commit crimes, and even the poor don’t have health care issues,” said Ellen Wu, author of “The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority” and history professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. “That’s quite the change from before World War II when many of us were seen as unclean and prone to diseases.”

California Assemblymember David Chiu, a Democrat who represents the eastern half of San Francisco and chairs the California Asian & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, said lawmakers must recognize that Asian Americans are a loosely linked group of immigrants with distinct challenges and needs.  

but our issue hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. – David Chiu, California Assemblymember https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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David Chiu, California AssemblymemberThe attention being paid to the disparities endured during the pandemic by Black and Latinos is important, but our issue hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.

“The attention being paid to the disparities endured during the pandemic by Black and Latinos is important, but our issue hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves,” he said. 

One small demographic victory for Asian Americans came in 1997 when President Bill Clinton directed the Office of Management and Budget to expand its data classification system to break out “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders” from the Asian American group. That geographic list includes countries such as Micronesia, Tonga, Vanuatu, Guam, the Marshall Islands and Fiji.

As a result, we know today that Pacific Islanders rank third in terms of COVID-19 deaths, behind Native Americans and Black Americans. 

But many other Asians said they are largely neglected by government officials.

What disappoints Marc Belocura most, he said, is that he feels ignored despite living in a part of town that city officials once highlighted as a bastion of Filipino culture.

“Since the city obviously knows we are here, why is there not more outreach that is culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate?” said Belocura, 23. “Or maybe we just are not on their radar.”

People shop at the produce market in Chinatown in downtown San Francisco on Sept. 29, 2020. Last fall, Asians accounted for nearly 40% of COVID-19 deaths in the city.Harrison Hill, USA TODAY

Belocura girds himself each time he prepares to leave the one-room studio he shares with his parents and sister to shop for food and supplies.

Even before COVID-19, his aging neighborhood just south of Market Street was crumbling. Now more storefronts have shuttered. To avoid the homeless camps that have mushroomed across the area, Belocura walks in the street and hopes he doesn’t get hit by a car.

When he makes it home, he must then navigate a narrow stairwell to get into his one-room apartment on the second floor of a five-story building. 

Belocura’s parents, who are 71 and 60, share the lone bed. His sister, 35, and he put pillows on the floor each night. Transmission in the studio’s confines would likely be immediate.

“That’s why I just can’t get COVID when I go out,” he said. “I can’t.”

Asian American communities in San Francisco speak a range of languages including Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Laotian, Samoan, Tongan, Vietnamese and Hindi. The city’s website notes that COVID-19 information is available in English, Chinese, Filipino and Spanish.

Efforts by city health officials to inform Asian residents about COVID-19 safety precautions and testing in their native languages have sometimes resulted in confusing or alienating translations.

For example, information about pop-up virus testing sites sometimes can come across as demands, while in other cases the language is just plain confusing.

One flyer written in the Filipino language of Tagalog told people to “cover their entire face,” said Luisa Antonio, executive director of the Bayanihan Equity Center, a Filipino American support group. 

In another instance, an Aug. 11 health advisory issued by the city showed Tier 1 Priority were those hospitalized with symptoms, Tier 2 was anyone with symptoms or close contact with confirmed cases, and Tier 2A included a list of ethnic groups “experiencing marginalization, systemic inequity and health inequities.” 

Black, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander residents were mentioned – but no other Asian groups, said Dr. Amy Tang, director of immigrant health at North East Medical Services, a health clinic that focuses on the city’s Chinese American population.

“To not include other Asians among ethnic minorities who should get tested is pretty appalling,” said Tang. 

is pretty appalling. – Dr. Amy Tang, director of immigrant health at North East Medical Services https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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Dr. Amy Tang, director of immigrant health at North East Medical ServicesTo not include other Asians among ethnic minorities who should get tested is pretty appalling.

Department of Public Health officials declined an interview request about outreach efforts. An e-mailed response from the city’s COVID-19 Command Center offered condolences to the loved ones of those who died from COVID-19 and noted that a majority of people who died were over 60 and had underlying health conditions.

In California, about 5 million of 40 million state residents are Asian American, and in three-quarters of those homes, languages other than English are spoken regularly, according to the U.S. census.

Sasanna Yee, co-founder of the nonprofit Communities as One, said city officials need to pay closer attention to capturing the cultural nuances that are sometimes lost in poor translations.

Depending on how things are written, they can trigger alarm, Yee added. “Who is asking me to come out? What is this information used for? Can I trust who is asking me to do this?”

Even some Asian Americans who speak fluent English said government officials have not made it easy to get information about the virus. 

Huiting “Rita” Huang grew alarmed when her mother-in-law told her that there had been a positive coronavirus case among the Chinese emigres to whom she was providing nursing services. The mother-in-law was unsure what to do and feared her poor English would make getting information about where to get tested even harder.

Huang felt confident she could help. Her English was solid and she had experience getting COVID-19 information as a project coordinator and health educator for the nonprofit NICOS Chinese Health Coalition.

Instead, she wound up mired in a bureaucratic doom loop. After pursuing a series of online testing-site leads through a variety of city- and community-run websites – all requiring fluency in English – Huang soon learned that there were no available appointments at testing facilities close to their neighborhood.

Huang eventually found a city-run testing site near Pier 30 along San Francisco Bay. The test was negative.

“That was frustrating for me, and I speak English,” said Huang. “I can’t imagine what it would be like for someone like my mother-in-law. Well, I imagine you would simply give up on the hope of getting tested.“

Asian Americans in San Francisco are often left behind by city partnerships aimed at helping vulnerable populations. Efforts to increase COVID-19 testing sites largely involve Latino groups, such as Unidos En Salud. The city’s various isolation and quarantine sites for the homeless and partially housed also are being used largely by the city’s Latino population, with Hispanics making up 45% of those in shelters while Asians account for 7%.

Asian activists and health care workers trying to fill the void said they face a population that often is wary of Western medicine, fatalistic about getting the virus, culturally averse to passing along bad news to elders and nervous about losing employment.

Natalie Ah Soon, health planner with the Asian Pacific Islander Health Parity Coalition advocacy group, said some people have told her, “If God means for me to be COVID-19 positive, then OK.”

Kent Woo, executive director of the NICOS Chinese Health Coalition, said residents sometimes are suspicious of health care workers when they visit local low-income buildings to talk about coronavirus safety tips. 

“Folks say, ‘What’s the point of being tested?’ or ‘We don’t know where to go if we get infected,'” he said. “When we offer the option to anyone who tests positive to leave the premises and go to a hotel, they refuse.”

Teams have started to be more proactive, he said, heading to single-room occupancy residences and other housing complexes before there is any rumor of a positive test. The goal is to prepare residents so they know how to respond if someone falls sick. 

The need is dire. Amy Dai, project coordinator for the Chinatown Community Development Center, an advocacy group that also manages low-income properties, learned that in a building she manages, 10 residents out of 30 families had tested positive.

A deserted Grant Street in Chinatown on April 1, 2020, in San Francisco.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

When she approached two of the residents who had come down with a fever, they assured her they couldn’t be positive because they had not left the building. A subsequent visit to a doctor confirmed they had COVID-19. 

If they had not waited to get tested, “it could have prevented the other infections,” said Dai.

The virus has many of San Francisco’s Asian Americans living like shut-ins.

Only reluctantly did Sisong Thepkaysone, 70, recently make her way from her public housing building overlooking a freeway to her doctor’s office for a routine check-up. She hasn’t seen any information about COVID-19 testing in her native Laotian. All she knows is she must stay healthy.

The trip filled her with dread. With some public transportation routes canceled, she had to change buses, prolonging her exposure. Worse yet, some passengers weren’t wearing masks. 

if I got the virus. – Sisong Thepkaysone, a former Thai-restaurant cook https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/10/18/coronavirus-asian-americans-racism-death-rates-san-francisco/5799617002/”>Copy text
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Sisong Thepkaysone, a former Thai-restaurant cookI’m old, I have asthma. I’m not sure what I would do if I got the virus.

“I’m old, I have asthma,” Thepkaysone, a former Thai-restaurant cook who fled war-torn Laos with three young boys and no husband in 1981, said through an interpreter. “I’m not sure what I would do if I got the virus.”

Once at the doctor’s office, an interpreter was called by phone to translate medication directions. Thepkaysone grew upset. She expected quality medical care after the risk she had put herself through, not a faceless voice. 

“It was not a personal experience, she said. “I didn’t like it.” 

Thepkaysone prefers to spend her days at home making Laotian dishes for relatives. She used to go out to shop and visit a local Buddhist temple to give alms. But now her children shop for her and the temple is closed. Sometimes she checks in on friends through Facebook. She watches television, but her limited knowledge of English renders programs a pantomime.

“I’m careful,” she said. “All I know is the virus is easy to get.”

Rong never found out whether her daughter had COVID-19. But her days remain filled with dread.

For the past few months, the family has had little money for food or rent, which is $750 a month. Sometimes, neighbors give them something to eat; other times she goes to the local food bank. 

“We eat lots of potatoes,” she said.

It’s a far cry from the life she envisioned for herself. In Guangdong Province, Rong had a promising job as a clothing store clerk. At the urging of her former husband’s parents, she emigrated 12 years ago to California, where she found work as a janitor to keep the family afloat. Since the pandemic hit, she has been on unemployment insurance.

That’s left the family with no option but to remain in their Chinatown apartment. The communal kitchen isn’t cleaned regularly. Sometimes, leaks from a floor above make their way to the shower on the floor below. Often, the leaking fluid smells like urine. 

“Smell me, Mom, I’m more dirty than before I showered,” Amy Rong once told her mother.

Rong doesn’t know anyone who has contracted the virus. For her neighbors in the building, getting tested remains a common fear. 

Mostly, Rong waits for the day when the pandemic is over. For a day when it will feel safe to venture outside. For a day when her American dream can resume.

Contributing: Myron Lee, Mark Nichols

Follow USA TODAY national correspondent Marco della Cava: @marcodellacava

Explore the series »

Deadly Discrimination

Racist policies mean many Black, Latino, Asian and Indigenous Americans are poorer and sicker than white Americans. COVID-19 makes these inequalities deadly.

This six-part USA TODAY investigation shows how the policies of the past and present have made people of color prime targets for COVID-19. Reporters travelled to five counties that embody the effects of systemic racism to bring these stories to light.

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It’s really an unbelievable chain of oppression – it’s still squeezing us, it still has its grip. And it’s still killing us.
– Anna Marie Rondon, executive director of the New Mexico Social Justice and Equity Institute in McKinley County

The post Racism drives excessive demise fee in San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

From Lovepreet Dhinsa

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and USF School of Law Professor Bill Ong Hing had a live discussion on Facebook this week about the long history of anti-Asian racism in the United States.

USF Professor Hing currently teaches at the USF School of Law, has served on the city’s police commission committee, and has successfully published several books on racism and immigration.

Both Boudin and Hing expressed condolences to Daunte Wright’s family.

DA Boudin stated: “We are still watching the trial of George Floyd and now, not far from there, we have another young black person who died by the police. We share your pain. Something has to change. “

Prof. Hing also expressed his sadness and anger over the shooting and wanted to point out the Taser’s apology. Hing, a former committee member of the city police commission, led the opposition efforts against the opposition to the adoption of a taser.

In large part, he attributed the tool’s inefficiency to half the time it didn’t work, and found law enforcement to use this as an excuse far too often.

The conversation then shifted to the cause of renewed attention and increased hate crimes against the AAPI community. Boudin asked Hing to address the increase in these incidents.

Hing firmly believes that the cause of this boom lies in racism and hatred. He pointed to the APPI hate violence program which has followed these actions in which the The program has measured 3,000 incidents over the past six months.

He attributes this boom in large part, but not entirely, to President Trump’s rhetoric at the start of the pandemic when he began to refer to the pandemic as the “China virus.”

Hing believes that some people use this rhetoric as a license to act, while others, who may be unfamiliar with what is happening, might see a country leader saying these words and be forced to respond to them in a similar manner .

Presenter Rachel Marshall spoke briefly about the implications of these incidents for fueling division and undermining public safety. With this in mind, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, co-sponsored by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, recently passed Law SB 299 to ensure that victims of police violence are compensated and well protected.

District Attorney Boudin also stressed that these incidents are being taken extremely seriously with a policy of zero tolerance for racist crimes.

Boudin acknowledged that “the attention we pay to these incidents is necessary but not new. This racism, violence and bigotry is a long-standing problem and more effective tools are needed to address these problems. “

Prof. Hing was asked by the moderator to elaborate on this longstanding issue of racism, and he admits that while this awareness of change is new, racism and hatred towards these communities is not.

In 1982, Hing cited the Chinese Exclusion Law, which stopped the influx of Chinese workers into the United States. However, many people forget the violence that led to this law. In the bay, several grassroots organizations and coalitions have started an area specifically geared towards AAPI communities.

Professor Hing also referred to the 88 Chinese minors who were murdered in California that same year alone.

Similarly, in Antioch in the 1870s, many homes of Chinese immigrants had been burned down and many Chinese were driven from the city where they could be monitored.

Following these incidents, Professor Hing referred to a US spy plane that had landed in China and that the plane would return. Because of this, many began boycotting Chinese restaurants and discriminating against Chinese artists, often imitating their language and making fun of them.

Hing also noted the murder of Vincent China in Detroit at the hands of other auto workers over competition concerns and misguided beliefs about killing a man who was “Asian looking”. Hing stated that these competitive crimes were quite common as many Asians are alleged to be stealing jobs or opportunities.

Citing these references, DA Boudin mentioned that because of the “long and embarrassing history of the United States”, Chinatowns were created across the country in solidarity and as a safe haven.

Prof. Hing agreed with Boudin when he stated that “while some Chinatowns were herded into these communities, others created them out of solidarity”. Hing agrees that Asian people have asked for help here because they couldn’t trust law enforcement to protect them. He cited a law by the California Supreme Court that prevented Chinese immigrants from giving evidence in court.

The conversation then shifted when DA Boudin began asking Professor Hing about the challenges and opportunities we are currently facing in protecting our communities in San Francisco.

Professor Hing stated, “It starts with people like you. You have become much more than this event. It begins with leaders, elected officials, and other community leaders. And these leaders need it to speak out against these incidents. “Professor Hing specifically mentioned the importance of advocating for individuals, whether it be against a friend joking about racial groups or for examples of what our community is about.

The moderator then asked District Attorney Chesa Boudin about the challenges he faces in protecting these communities in San Francisco. While Boudin didn’t want to point out all of the efforts made this year, he focused on the priorities his office has right now, including voice access, trust building / developing and ongoing communication.

District Attorney Boudin emphasized the importance of helping Asian communities with language barriers, whether it be with what happens in a courtroom or getting help when needed. To further these priorities, he is hiring more Chinese-speaking staff and working to ensure that all of the services and resources provided by the office are accessible.

Boudin also stressed the need to build and develop trust.

Compared to a time when Chinese Americans could not testify in court and were not protected by law enforcement, he emphasized the importance of informing the community that his office is available to them and that Asian Americans who seek help from Chinatowns can also seek help in his office.

Boudin also stressed the importance of continuous communication to make sure people actually understand what the office is doing for them.

Boudin said he believes there is a lot of misinformation out there about what his office is doing or what cases they are pursuing; However, to advance these priorities, he participates in weekly roundtables with Chinese news outlets and community leaders.

Boudin stated that he is proactively reaching out to people in the community and working to improve communication efforts. He also stressed the need to work on crime prevention, as victims already suffer losses if a racially motivated crime is committed. Boudin also supports the pursuit of intercultural understanding and direct collaboration with the community.

Boudin also announced an upcoming summit on May 14th where he will join fellow community members and critical thinkers on these issues. Boudin mentioned the importance of community feedback in what they want to see from the office.

Hing acknowledged that repeating history is a central theme in order to be aware and to be proactive in advocating change. He looks forward to working with Boudin’s office and having future discussions.

Closing this discussion, Boudin said that these discussions will take place every two weeks with various members of the community featured on the District Attorney’s Facebook page because, although “we have failed in the past, we cannot allow this to happen together. We have to come together to fight it. “

Lovepreet Dhinsa is a student at the University of San Francisco pursuing her bachelor’s degree in politics with a minor in law. She has a passion for criminal law and aspires to enter law school to fight for clients in need. As such, she is also involved in her university’s bogus litigation program and student government.

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The post San Francisco D.A. in Dialog with USF Professor about Lengthy Historical past of AAPI Racism within the U.S. appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

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Mary Poppins’ fantastic adventures are a cherished part of childhood for many. From the beloved books by PL Travers to the classic Mary Poppins movie from Disney and even the recent Mary Poppins Returns, audiences of all ages will be charmed. However, not everyone is that nostalgic about the nanny.

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, an English professor at Linfield College, argues in a comment for the New York Times that the story has some disturbing, racist tones that come from the original Travers books but invade the films. Pollack-Pelzner specifically cites one of the most memorable scenes in the 1964 film – the one in which Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews) makes her face “black” with soot while dancing with chimney sweeps.

“One of the more indelible images from the 1964 film is the blackout of Mary Poppins,” writes Pollack-Pelzner. “When the magical nanny accompanies her young protégés Michael and Jane Banks in her chimney, her face is covered with soot, but instead of wiping it off, she playfully powdered her nose and cheeks even blacker. Then she leads the children on a dancing exploration of the Londoners Roofs with Dick Van Dyke’s sooty chimney sweep Bert. “

The scene itself may not be problematic, but its roots are. According to Pollack-Pelzner, Travers’ books make some disturbing associations between the blackened skin of chimney sweeps and racist stereotypes. In the novel “Mary Poppins Opens the Door” from 1943 a maid yells “Don’t touch me, you black heathen”, while the maid later threatens to quit when the chimney sweep approaches the cook and shouts “If the Hottentot goes” in the chimney I’ll go out the door. “For the context of why this is so problematic, the term ‘Hottentot’ is an archaic arc used to describe black South Africans – and that term is also used in the Disney film.

Mary Poppins Returns isn’t immune to criticism, either. Pollack-Pelzner further notes that Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda are flirting with the film itself with the troubling racial issues from the source footage. It specifically refers to a scene from the first novel “Mary Poppins” published in 1934. In it, the children encounter a scantily clad black woman with a naked child. The book uses an offensive term – “pickaninny” – to describe the child and lets the black woman speak in the minstrel dialect. The scene was so problematic that the San Francisco Public Library banned the book, which in turn led Travers to update the scene, change the dialogue, and turn the offensive characters into an animal, especially a hyacinth macaw.

The same macaw ultimately appears in Mary Poppins Returns as a wealthy widow named “Hyacinth Macaw” who is naked except for “two feathers and a leaf” – a description that strangely resembles the description of the woman in the original book.

Pollack-Pelzner’s play gets to the heart of some interesting points and also makes it clear that these issues are not an indictment against the films. Instead, the context just sheds light on the troubling elements of the source material, noting that Disney poses a bigger problem reaching into racist tropics as a source of entertainment. However, not everyone sees it that way. The play has sparked quite a debate online on the subject, with many people on the chimney sweep scene hanging out and arguing that it’s not racist at all.

Whatever your make of the situation (and you can check out some of the social media debates below), Mary Poppins Returns was not only quite successful at the box office. The film is currently nominated for several Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for “The Place Where Lost Things Go”.

Mary Poppins Returns is now in theaters.

The post ‘Mary Poppins’ Accused of Racism Over Chimney Sweep Scene appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.