New Oakland Chinatown Foot Patrol Forms to Protect Asian American Community nbcbayarea.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nbcbayarea.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus joined a coalition of state lawmakers on the Capitol steps in Sacramento on Monday afternoon to promote a slate of bills aimed at addressing hate crimes against minority groups.
Rob Bonta, a member of the Assembly from the East Bay who is part of the Asian and Pacific Islander Caucus, organized the gathering so the state’s Jewish, Latino, LGBTQ, Black and Armenian leaders could express solidarity and showcase their legislative efforts amid a rise in racist attacks targeting Asian Americans across the state, including recent violent attacks in Oakland and San Francisco.
HKS Equity Coalition, a student group advocating for equity and justice at the Harvard Kennedy School, published an open letter in late January calling for several equity-related changes at the Kennedy School.
The letter rearticulates demands the Coalition made in previous years, including the implementation of a semester-long course covering racism and colonialism, as well as biannual anti-racism workshops, a public audit of the Kennedy Schoolâs course curricula, and the annual hiring of four BIPOC faculty.
The Kennedy School s Black Student Union, Latinx Caucus, Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus, Arab Caucus, Womenâs Caucus, and the LGBTQ Caucus joined the HKS Equity Coalition in signing the letter, which garnered 329 signatures as of Wednesday.
Hoover Lee, a Hawaii-born gay Chinese American activist and champion of global LGBTQ human rights, died February 11 at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. He was 83.
His friend Edgar Poma said that Mr. Lee s death was due to several health issues but was not COVID-related.
Mr. Lee was a founding member of the Association of Lesbian and Gay Asians; one of the original organizers of the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance; founder of the Asian and Pacific Islander Caucus of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club; and coordinator and community organizer for many successful progressive political campaigns and causes. If there was ever to be a founding father of the gay Asian movement in San Francisco it would be Hoover Lee, Lawrence Wong, a gay man and former elected official, wrote in an email to the Bay Area Reporter. Hoover was active as an openly gay man as a member of straight groups like the Organization of Chinese Americans and the Chinese American Democratic Club. But
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Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), the head of Congress’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus, is laser-focused on getting more AAPI representation into government.
Most recently, Chu has pushed back on the lack of AAPI Cabinet Secretaries in the current administration, and the omission of AAPI members in a previous “unity task force” on immigration. While she welcomes cabinet-level appointees Office of Management and Budget director nominee Neera Tanden and US Trade Representative nominee Katherine Tai as well as the historic election of Vice President Kamala Harris, she emphasizes the importance of calling out the gaps that exist, too. (The Biden administration has previously said that it’s committed to building a team that “looks like America” including one of the most diverse cabinets ever.)