With hate crimes and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders on the rise since the coronavirus outbreak kicked in a year ago, Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis and a gathering of local officials urged an increase in funding to fight back against the trend.
“In my district, a Chinese man was attacked at a bus stop in Rosemead and a temple in Little Tokyo was vandalized in the past several weeks,” Solis said during a Monday, March 8, online gathering calling for a more expansive anti-hate response network in the county. “And we know that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of hate incidents have gone unreported.”
Supervisor Holly Mitchell echoed her board colleague.
“It’s disheartening to stand here today and continue to talk about the same thing — racial hatred being perpetuated in your community,” said Mitchell, speaking during the panel, joined by a collection of local officials.
The online event was presented ahead of Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, during which leaders will consider a motion by Solis to extend the network of local non-profit organizations that respond to hate crimes and other incidents aimed at the area’s diverse population.
That network, dubbed LA v. Hate, is run by the county Human Relations Commission. To sustain the county’s 211 hotline that helps answer and track calls from victimized residents, the county needs at least $831,000 each year, Solis said.
Each call triggers a partnering agency that can offer a number of responses, including counseling, advocacy, help with medical costs or aid defending civil rights.
Solis’ motion comes as hateful incidents continue to increase, especially against people of Asian descent, officials said.
Solis said at least part of the blame falls upon “the person with the loudest bullhorn,” former President Donald Trump, who she said “mocked and denigrated” Asian-American communities. From the pandemic’s early days in March 2020, Trump frequently used the term “China virus” and “kung-flu” to describe the virus.
At the time, the White House defended the language. They said previous epidemics, such as the Spanish flu and West Nile Virus, were named for geographic locations. They labeled the controversy a “fake media outrage.”
During Monday’s panel, local residents described some of the incidents they’d endured or witnessed in recent months:
- An elementary school worker in Rosemead was beaten with a cane while at a bus stop. He lost the tip of his finger in the attack;
- A 16-year-old San Fernando Valley boy was bullied and beaten and, in Koreatown, a man was attacked by two men who yelled racial slurs;
- Racial epithets were hurled at a woman simply walking her dog; and
- A resident of an apartment building tried to get an Asian tenant evicted, fearing they had the virus.
Also among the incidents was the vandalization of the Higashi Honganji Buddist Temple in Little Tokyo, prompting the LAPD to launch a hate crime/arson investigation.
The temple’s Rev. Noriaki Ito said a man climbed over the fence and set two wooden lantern stands ablaze, knocked two large brass lanterns of their stands and threw a rock that shattered a glass panel.
“Even though the damage could have been much worse, the pain of the attack was felt by all of our members and staff,” Ito said. While the incident has yet to be officially deemed a hate crime, there were similar actions in the area, officials said.
Hateful slurs are sadly familiar for Hong Lee, who spoke during Monday’s panel. At an L.A. restaurant a few months back, a man urged her to “go back to Asia” and unleashed a torrent of derogatory terms, she said, forcing her to seek help from police.
“I never felt so alone in my life,” she said. She shared the incident on Instagram, and at least five more women said they’d been victimized by the same man, she said.
Robin Toma, executive director of the Human Relations Coalition, said experiences like Lee’s often go unreported.
But when people report such events or talk openly about them, it can show “that we can really shift the power here and mobilize folks to take action, and not simply to be passive,” Toma said.
“Our last full-year report hit our highest level in 10 years,” Toma said. “There were large increases in 2019 in white supremacist hate crime. We saw the second-highest number we’ve ever seen of hate crimes with anti-immigrant slurs … and anti-Asian crime grew precipitously, as well.”
Anti-Asian hate crimes in 16 of America’s largest cities increased 149% in 2020, according to an analysis of preliminary police data by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State, San Bernardino.
The first spike occurred in March and April as the pandemic kicked in, the outbreak helping to trigger negative stereotyping of Asians, according to the report.
In 2019, there were seven reported hate crimes against residents of Asian descent in the city of Los Angeles, while in 2020 there were 15, according to LAPD Assistant Chief Beatrice Girmala. Three additional hate crimes have been reported against the community in 2021, she said.
The number of hate crimes in Los Angeles related to race or ethnicity in general grew by 18.6% in 2020 compared to 2019, according to LAPD Deputy Chief Chris Pitcher.
Organizations are urging local police to beef up their training for responding to and tracking such incidents.
At an L.A. Police Commission meeting earlier this month, commissioners also heard data from Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of the Asian and Pacific Policy and Planning Council, a coalition of more than 40 community organizations that serve and represent 1.5 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in L.A. County.
The coalition joined Stop AAPI Hate, which collects data on hate and discrimination against the Asian American and Pacfic Islander communities throughout the country. The incidents can include refusal of service, verbal harassment of elderly parents and essential workers, physical attacks and racist rhetoric.
“These are just emblematic of the over 2,800 incident reports that we’ve received at Stop AAPI Hate,” she said.
She also cited a California auditor’s report that found law enforcement agencies often failed to investigate or label instances as hate crimes, even though they fit that description.
“We condemn the hatred and violence directed at our Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the strongest terms,” said a statement issued by the L.A. Unified School District on Monday. “The racist attacks we have witnessed in California and beyond in recent weeks are horrifying and must be called out. We stand in solidarity with our AAPI students, families, and employees.”
Rev. Ito said the goal is not revenge.
“Our immediate reaction to the attack on our temple was anger and hurt, said Rev. Ito. “But after that initial stop we have to look inward to our Buddhist teaching, the encouragement that we try to the best of our abilities show compassion to every person and to every living thing.”
It’s an aspiration that “might sound like a pipe dream,” he said. But the diverse region has a chance to “enjoy and learn from that diversity” and put an end to the hate and to the violence.
City News Service contributed to this report.
