‘We’re not gonna be pushed around’: Sonoma County’s Asian community speaks out

Activists, teachers and community members denounced recent acts of violence against Asian Americans and called for unity and cooperation during an event held Saturday afternoon in downtown Santa Rosa.

“I’ll say it again: solidarity is what combats hate,” said Elizabeth Escalante, junior high teacher, president of Wine Country Young Democrats and one of the primary organizers of Saturday’s “Game Over” event.

As she spoke, Escalante looked out over Old Courthouse Square, which was decorated with messages written in chalk and peopled by small groups of masked listeners sitting appropriately spaced apart.

Escalante, a Filipina-American woman, and fellow organizer Chantavy Tornado, who is Khmer and the daughter of survivors of Cambodia’s killing fields, said they wanted the speaking event to both highlight the uniqueness and depth of local Asian American people’s experiences and demonstrate how that community finds a place within a broader struggle for justice in the nation.

The diversity of both the participants and audience, which swelled at its peak to about 70 people, captured the spirit of cross-community solidarity. Speakers who stepped up to the mic included Eddie Alvarez, Santa Rosa’s second Latino City Council member, and Joanna Paun, Petaluma’s first Black elected official. Each acknowledged local progress toward equity, in addition to an ongoing need to confront racism and bias that affect Sonoma County’s minority residents.

“We can’t pretend like this is a new thing,” said Paun, president of the Petaluma City School Board, while calling out examples of hateful language and acts against Asian Americans in the past year. In recent weeks, an 84 year-old San Francisco Thai American man died after being pushed to the ground in what his family suspects is a hate crime; Oakland’s Chinatown has also experienced an uptick in violent crime in the weeks around the Lunar New Year.

And throughout nearly a year of the COVID-19 pandemic, 60% of Asian Americans have witnessed people blaming Asians for the coronavirus, according to a Center for Public Integrity/IPSOS poll.

But Paun also described some of the tensions that are often entrenched among different minority groups, which she herself has born witness to. She grew up hearing occasional derogatory remarks about Asian people, she said, and in college, some people used to question why she had so many Asian friends.

“The funny thing was ... I’d never thought this was an issue until other people started pointing this out, and other people started questioning my friendships,” she said.

Fragmentation between Asian Americans and other racial minority groups, the organizers said, is connected to the “model minority myth.” The stereotype paints Asian immigrants as especially hardworking and aspirational, achieving success in large part by not making trouble or complaining. It first emerged in the 1960s, and has had the effect of driving a wedge between Asian and other brown and Black communities in America.

Speakers took direct aim at the concept Saturday.

“We’re not gonna be pushed around and we’re not gonna put our heads down,” Escalante said. “We’re working on it. But we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Asian American voices are needed, said Sara Casmith, interim president of the North Bay Organizing Project, in any effort to confront the legacy of segregation and racist policies in America. Casmith spent part of their speech reviewing the history of policies that excluded Chinese people from immigration and basic rights.

"I’m proud to stand here as the ’dregs of Asia,’“ said Casmith, referring to a line from Leland Stanford’s 1862 inaugural address when he became governor of California. Leland would go on to support legislation that extended the Chinese Exclusion Act, in spite of the fact that Chinese American workers were critical to his own amassing of wealth as a businessman.

An opening chant by Ajahn Manus, from the Wat Manah Buddhaphumi; a musical performance; a photo booth and the chalk drawings punctuated the speeches with some creative expression and levity. After the event ended, brightly colored phrases such as “Stop The Hate“ and ”Spread Love“ lingered on the concrete, testifying to the message repeated throughout the afternoon.

Sara Seitchik Sebastian, who stopped by with her daughter after spending the morning volunteering with the Sonoma County Black Forum’s Saturday food giveaway, said the event left her feeling hopeful.

“Any time we show up for one another, we come away with more connections, more collaborations and more solidarity,” she said. “I feel like we’re becoming stronger as a community.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kaylee Tornay at 707-521-5250 or kaylee.tornay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ka_tornay.