Young Asian Americans Are Making a Difference in their Communities During COVID-19
By Bessie Chan-Smitham and Mary Tablante
All across the country, young Asian Americans have stepped up to combat racism and address the public health crisis in their communities. Here are just some of their inspiring stories.
Ohio: Tessa Xuan and Ohio Progressive Asian Women’s Leadership were concerned with the rise in hate incidents targeting Asian Americans in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and all across Ohio. They led a sign-on letter with hundreds of signatories to demand action from their elected officials. They sent the letter to the governor, state legislators, local city council members, and public officials throughout the state of Ohio and asked that they stand in solidarity with the 350,000 Ohioans who have Chinese, Asian, or Pacific Islander heritage to speak out against hate.
Their advocacy and message worked. Since sharing the letter, a Senator released a public statement against anti-Asian hate and legislators introduced two new bills in the Ohio State House focused on combating anti-Asian racism and establishing an Ohio AAPI Affairs Commission. OPAWL also launched the #IWillEatWithYou campaign to encourage community care while showing solidarity with everyone impacted by anti-Asian racism during the pandemic. See OPAWL’s Instagram and Facebook for more information and for their current work.
Houston and Washington, D.C.: At the onset of the pandemic, Thu Nguyen immediately went to work to help her family and community navigate the Small Business Administration’s Injury Disaster Loan process by compiling information about the loan and Paycheck Protection Program. Through Thu’s research, calls to SBA, and calls to banks, she created resources to help community members understand the program, process, and interest stipulations. Thu also translated this information into Vietnamese and crowd-sourced other Asian language translations to share this knowledge with limited English proficient communities. Most recently, Thu worked on translating advocacy language into Vietnamese.
Kansas: Jordan Peyton is part of the Kansas State University Asian American Student Union. They released infographics and statements regarding the anti-Asian and Asian American sentiment. A City Commissioner of Riley County (where KSU is located) downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic because “there aren’t many Chinese people in the county.” The organization immediately released a statement addressing what was said and have continued to stay on top of local news during this crisis.
The organization is also aiding in Project COVID-19, a joint effort by Rainbow Loom, the Midwest Asian American Students Union, the Midwest Chinese American Students Union, and the East Coast Asian American Student Union, to raise funds to buy masks for under-served communities. Along with these efforts, they have reached out to their local high school’s Asian Student Union to host an online event to let them know as a community they are stronger together. They also have reached out to campus partners to check in on them during this time. As an individual, Jordan has been working with the Manhattan community to help continue bringing meals to those in need by connecting people who are still in the city together.
Washington: Henry Liu has been doing grocery deliveries for the elderly in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District every week. He works at InterIm CDA, a nonprofit affordable housing and community development organization that serves low-income, refugee, and immigrant communities. Watch a Facebook video from the Seattle Channel featuring his work. Henry’ also regularly uploads videos to his YouTube channel that feature local businesses and highlights community work in Seattle.
Minnesota: Asian American Organizing Project’s Youth Action Team, which includes teenagers Pakou, Saylia, Pa, Kimi, and Pa Hok, created a zine that addresses youth mental health during COVID-19. This zine focuses on providing resources that address issues that are impacting youth mental health during COVID-19. This includes mental health resources; self-care strategies; e-learning tips and resources; safety and financial resources; and dialogue on racism and violence against the Asian community during COVID-19. They are hoping to share this zine with their peers and other youth in the city so that they can feel supported during this time of isolation. They are also working to set up meetings with their school administration to ask for more accessible mental health services and practices during COVID-19.
Washington, D.C.: Louie Tan Vital is a Filipina American spoken word poet and community organizer. During this time when we see so much anti-Asian and Asian American racism and xenophobia, words matter. Louie used the power of words to share this important response to Andrew Yang’s problematic op-ed in The Washington Post: We Asian Americans are not the virus, but we can be part of the cure. See Louie’s Twitter post and Facebook post with the response piece below:
If I dress up like a colonizer and wear a shirt saying “This country is founded on slavery and genocide”, would that be an appropriate demonstration of my American-ness, Andrew Yang?
If we are to aspire for American-ness, what is Yang asking us to forgo in its place?
Why do “Asian Americans need to embrace and show our American-ness” by “wear[ing] red, white and blue”? The problem in encouraging American-ness fails to acknowledge the unspoken ideal of the “American-ness” this society holds as an ideal and the hierarchical spectrum in which American-ness is undeniably ranked. More American than whom? Less of what? Less Asian? Less foreign?
This differentiation is the kind of dangerous mentality that causes Asian Americans to be ashamed of their culture and appearance — the kind that breeds self-resentment.
Red, white, and blue is not some sort of armor that will protect me: it will not disguise my Asian face nor conceal my Tagalog-inflected English. If anything, aspirational American-ness is a sad attempt at aligning ourselves with our tormentors.
It is not Asian Americans’ jobs to prove we aren’t the personification of the virus. We don’t need to prove anything.
A solution here is not grassroots cultural denial, but rather community pressure to hold this administration responsible for utilizing the prejudiced rhetoric that emboldens racist attacks in the first place. Calling Covid the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu” is white supremacy.
Trump saying “Chinese virus” is an informal public policy whose usage sanctions its normalcy for everyday people to use — a normalcy that endangers Asians and Asian Americans.
Dear Andrew Yang, wearing red, white, and blue is as meaningless as it is ambiguous a solution to a global pandemic and its subsequent prejudice. Being patriotic is not a sin. But encouraging cultural assimilation is not an appropriate response to systemic racism.
Blending in with the problem is not the solution.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice coordinates www.StandAgainstHatred.org, a national hate crime and hate incidents tracker accessible in English, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Through this website, Asian American Advancing Justice documents hate crimes, harassment, and discrimination experienced by the Asian American community. The reports help us monitor and push back against hate, educate elected officials about the problem, and engage the media to cover Asian American experiences with COVID-19 racism and xenophobia.
Not only are these individuals and organizations mobilizing to help communities during COVID-19, they also have been working in their families and communities to address anti-Blackness and anti-Black racism. Together we will create the change we want to see.
For more resources for the AAPI community, see AAPI-ERN.org.
Bessie Chan-Smitham is the director of community engagement at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, where Mary Tablante is the digital strategies communications manager.
