 Welcome everybody. Welcome to the Yolo Yed Spring Leaders Summit. We've titled it the Yolo United Against Hate. So thank you all for taking the time out of your very busy schedules to join us this evening. So my name is Oscar Villegas, Yolo County Supervisor proudly representing West Sacramento and Clarksburg. So we'll take care of some housekeeping items. First of all, and then some ground rules to get through the session this afternoon. So first of all, the meeting is being recorded. It'll be available after the meeting to share. So please keep yourself muted unless you are speaking. And then for the best viewing, select the speaker view setting on your device, and then use the chat feature for any questions or comments and ideas. And we won't be able to get obviously to all the questions and all the comments, but we certainly want to capture them. So please join right in. So just very briefly by way of some brief background as recent horrific events against our API community unveiled against our brothers and sisters, one of our colleagues on the Board of Supervisors, Gary Sandy, asked that the Yolo County Board of Supervisors adopt the resolution denouncing all the hateful acts, the racist hateful comments, the xenophobia against our API community. And subsequently, many of the other cities and school districts throughout Yolo County followed suit and did the same. But during the meeting, it was very clear to all of us, I think those of us that were part of that meeting, and many of you are part of that meeting, it was very clear that we needed to do a little bit more. And so during that public testimony portion, particularly, it was very clear. So using the existing format that we already had in Yolo County, a structure called the Yolo Leaders Forum, which receives staff support from the local agency formation commission in Yolo. And thank you, Christine, for all the work that you've done in helping to put together the event this evening. The idea was pitched to bring together a range of folks who can help us understand and process really what is happening to our API community. So we hope tonight's conversation will provide some healing, certainly inspire some hope, and signal loud and clear to the entire world the solidarity that exists here in Yolo County as we continue our collective work in fighting these injustices and reckoning with the issues that face our communities and in the world of the race relations once again. And so as we go through the range of emotions, it's important to hear from many different perspectives and what weighs certainly heavy on one of us, it weighs heavily on all of us. We have a lot of ground to cover tonight, so let's go ahead and jump right into it. So we have two, we'll begin this evening with two prominent elected officials who could not attend in person. They're extremely busy, but they're gracious enough to provide us with a short clip. So I wanted to share their support and encouragement of the tonight's event. So you'll hear first from Congresswoman Doris Matsui, who has represented this region for the last 16 years and currently represents West Sacramento, the eastern portion of Yolo County. She's worked hard to strengthen local flood protection, ensuring quality, affordable health care. She promotes a clean energy economy and creates, and supports creating a vibrant region where all of our families can live, work and play. And then we, following her comments, we'll hear from Senator Pan, who represents District 6 in Sacramento, that's part of Sacramento, West Sacramento, Elk Grove, and the unincorporated portions of Sacramento County. Senator Pan is a pediatrician, a former UC Davis educator, and in 2010, Dr. Pan was first elected to the state assembly, and then in 2014 was elected to the state Senate. He's devoted his professional and political career toward helping the community stay safe and stay healthy. So I think Christine, at this point, we can jump right in and provide the videos. Hi everyone, and thank you for joining us today for this important conversation. I'd like to thank the Yolo County Board of Supervisors and our community partners who convened this event to have these difficult or critical discussions. We are here under upsetting circumstances, given the sharp rise of anti-Asian violence and discrimination here in our region and across the country. These community discussions are vital to express the fear, the emotion and the pain that AAPI communities are facing locally. None of us should have to live in fear for yourselves or your loved ones. Moving forward, we must all take this first step of honest conversation to do all we can do to root out this systemic problem plaguing our society. Unfortunately, the rise in violence we see is connected to the recent hateful rhetoric we have seen at the highest levels of our government. Seeking to divide us by making us fear the other, rather than unite around the many more things that make us all valued community members. Last week, I had the honor of testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee to share my personal history and provide valuable context to the danger of ignoring these racially charged attacks. The history of incarceration of Japanese-Americans, the history of exclusionary policies our country has enacted are not just stories from the history books for many residents here. They are stories from our families, the stories of our lives. Yet, like many of you here, I still believe that this is a great country. That we are capable of moving forward with a shared vision for our future built upon basic human dignity. I hope the conversations you have tonight are stepped forward toward a more unified region, one where our rich and diverse past is remembered and celebrated, and our future looks brighter. Thank you so much. I'm Dr. Richard Pan, and I'm very proud to represent Yellow County in the California State Senate. When Supervisor Oscar Viegas reached out and let me know of today's important forum, I was happy to know that Yellow County was taking this step and answering this very difficult moment with the leadership it calls for. I would like to thank Supervisor Viegas and Supervisor Don Saylor for their leadership in putting this forum together. And I also thank you to Washington Unified School District School Board Member Jackie Wong for her leadership on this issue as well. And the entire Yellow County Board of Supervisors and everyone participating here today. It has been both painful and disturbing to see an entire community targeted with hate, violence, and intimidation. The videos of our grandparents, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers being assaulted on the street have rocked us to our core. And very sadly, we have not been immune here in our home of the Yellow and Sacramento counties. As chair of the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, I am working with my colleagues to address the violence in California. And I'm proud to have helped pass 1.4 million in state funding to help support research and data gathering, currently underway by a variety of communities and state groups that have formed Stop AAPI Hate. But we definitely need our community partners to help stand firm against the hate being directed toward our Asian American sisters and brothers. And that is why your work today is so very important. Thank you for coming together to pull resources and work collectively. The solutions you developed today will make the community stronger for everyone. Thank you. Thank you very much, Oscar, for presenting the videos from Senator Pan and Congresswoman Matsui. My name is Don Saylor and I've been a part of the planning group working to prepare this session. I just want to remind folks, if you are not speaking, please mute your microphone so that we don't have to enjoy the purring of your cat or the dishwasher being loaded or any other of those kinds of activities that are going on. I'm so proud of the program that has been assembled today. And I'm looking forward to hearing from each of the presenters. We'll, in just a second, introduce Dr. Robin Magalit Rodriguez to speak and to set some context for us. Following her presentation, there will be a session led by Stephanie Lynn from KCRA and then some facilitated work groups led by Bernadette Austin from the Center for Regional Change. And then Daniel Kim, the Interim County Administrative Officer will have a panel that he will moderate that will bring some perspective back to the day. This is a very exciting and interesting program that, as Oscar said, we wanted to do something more than words on a page for a resolution. We happen to be blessed in this region with deep insights and people who really understand the nature of the context of the issues that we're facing today. Dr. Rodriguez is a professor of Asian American Studies and founding director of the Bulasan Center for Philippinex Studies. The Bulasan Center is a research partner with Stop AAPI-8. And if you look on their website, you'll find a regional report published last year, late last year, on the topic of AAPI experiences and harassment and various types of persecution in our region. And they're about to update that this year with a new session, a new piece on AAPI experiences during the pandemic. Dr. Rodriguez has published widely on Asian American community issues and focused more recently on Asian American activism. She is a committed community organizer and a social justice activist who helped to create the AAPI Greater Sacramento Regional Network last year to address anti-Asian aid, as well as to advocate for vulnerable and marginalized AAPI communities as they have struggled to secure resources for COVID testing and now vaccinations. We are very fortunate to have her with us here today. So Robin, please share some insights on the context and how we find ourselves in this place today. Thank you so much, Don. Thank you so much for everyone for organizing this event. It is for the most part straightforward to identify acts of anti-Asian hate in white supremacy, isn't it? Or is it? In the recent Atlanta shootings, whether the murders can be attributed to white supremacy is already being contested, that the targeted establishments for massage parlors, which are often racialized as Asian, that the majority of the victims were Asian, white supremacy is managing to escape from view. Recently, a Filipino American in Antioch suffering from a mental health breakdown died days after police officers subdued him and put his knee to his neck in a maneuver not unlike the way George Floyd was murdered last year. But his death has gotten very little attention from the mainstream media. Is it because the common view is that AAPIs are somehow exempt from racism at the hands of police as model minorities? In my talk today, I want to illustrate how anti-Asian hate and white supremacy is often not recognized or it is misrecognized. In the event description for today, there's a sentence that reads violence towards the AAPI community occurs in cycles punctuated by dormancy. That is true, but only partly. What I and others who do the work I do worry about is that the period of so-called dormancy is in fact when white supremacy continues to be active, where it finds ways to re-consolidate itself in less explicit ways and where its violence is perhaps even more pernicious. For example, it's when favorable views of Asian Americans dominate like the model minority myth, which represents Asians are successful and assimilated when violence still happens, when policies that deny services to poor immigrant Asians are instituted and Asians, not unlike the women who are victimized in Atlanta, are consigned to lives of destitution and poverty and premature death. In this case, it is those who may not wield guns but who wield the power of policy who are then responsible for lives lost. When as now, we in the Sacramento region have been hard pressed to get federal, state and local funds to support testing and vaccination efforts in marginalized Asian communities because our struggles are invisibilized by dominant representations of our community, again as model minorities, that is white supremacy. When our histories as people of color are sanitized and we are denied the opportunity to tell our stories, as in the ongoing struggle for ethnic studies, not just in the K-12 system, but even at the UC level, when our youth are made to endure an education that denies who they are and must suffer from deep mental health wounds as a consequence, that is also white supremacy. I would venture to say that it is the most dangerous sort of white supremacy because it can mask itself as being something else. When people who have been doing racial justice work like myself talk about structural racism, it has been code for white supremacy. It is the term we have used frankly so that we can try to better engage white audiences and white people in power, like many of you, so that we may actually get our issues heard and better yet responded to. But after years of doing this work, years of not being heard, years of not seeing policies change fast enough, I am exhausted and I'm fed up. I am tired of being gaslighted, made to feel as if I'm crying wolf when I point out examples of structural racism for my very own life or from the research I have done. I am going to name structural racism for what it is today, white supremacy, and I will speak to its most more explicit and more subtle manifestations. I'm tired of skirting around the term white supremacy in favor of terms like structural racism, and thus in my own way, being complicit in its perpetuation. Today I'll quickly review the history of more explicit forms of white supremacy and anti-Asian hate and then return to my point about more hidden forms of white supremacy by examining two major stereotypes of Asians, the yellow peril and the model minority. And I'm drawing here in part for my forthcoming second edition of a book that I co-authored entitled Asian American Sociological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. So let's just start with the yellow peril stereotype. It's one that is centuries old. It casts Asians and by extension, Asian Americans as economic, political, cultural, and even sexual threats to the West. Wanting to take it over. They Asians are apparel to be reviled, to be feared, and even to be eliminated. The stereotype is based in Orientalist framings of Asians broadly defined and extended to Asian Americans as the opposite of the ideal Westerner. As the Westerner is rational, kind, and sexually decent, the Oriental is irrational, conniving, and sexually deviant. The West needs to depict the Orient in this light in order to construct itself in its desired image. The threat from Asia was and continues to be military, economic, cultural, and sexual. Hence the recent fears of the domines of the U.S. economy by the Chinese. In the 80s it was the Japanese and the so-called Wuhan flu and even under the surface of discussions of the inlates shooting, purveyors of illicit sex. In the last century and a half, the American citizen has been defined over and against the Asian immigrant. Asians immigrating to the United States from the 19th century onward have been figured as a yellow peril, threatening to displace whites somehow, taking away their jobs or their land. Asians as the yellow peril, Asian Americans, are figuratively and literally linked to disease and decay. Do we think that Chinatowns exist because the Chinese chose it or because structures of white supremacy attempted to contain and confine the Chinese and other Asians? The yellow peril stereotype is not always at play but arises at different most moments of crises, economic, political, cultural, and of course most recently public health crisis. During such times an external agent such as the yellow peril unites real American. Orientalist racializations of Asians as physically and intellectually and morally different from whites predominated especially in periods of intense anti-Asian labor movements. They culminated in institutionalized discrimination such as immigration, exclusion, acts, and laws against the Chinese in 1882, Indians in 1917, Japanese and Koreans in 1924, and Filipinos in 1934. In the context of war Asian Americans were figured as threatening as during World War II with a mass incarceration of Japanese Americans and the racial profiling during the World War on Terror launched after 9-11. Of course the yellow peril also operated to justify U.S. and colonial and Cold War adventures from the Filipino American War of 1898 to World War II to the Vietnam and Korean Wars. The opposite of the yellow peril threat is the model minority, the other dominant stereotype of Asian Americans. When not seen as threatening to the nation Asian Americans are upheld as almost outwiting whites with their out their high scholastic achievements, low incarceration rates, residential integration, entrepreneur entrepreneurship, and more. The seemingly positive stereotype has gained currency because, like all stereotypes, it fits various misconceptions and racialized ideologies and it works to denigrate Asian Americans even as it purports to praise them. The model minority is cast as subservient and obedient. As a model minority Asian Americans can be successful but not considered assimilated enough to be seen as everyday citizens, much less civic and corporate leaders but I suppose in Yolo County there's some exception to that. But nevertheless in a broad sense the model minority is typically not considered to be American enough because at the end of the day they're not white. The model minority myth works not only to limit Asian Americans but also to uphold dominant ideologies of U.S. racial relations. The fact that a minority can achieve in the United States supports the American notion of a meritocratic society and that somehow it doesn't discriminate. The U.S. gets cast the model minority myth as enlightened and colorblind. Though I can't get into the full history here it's notable that the model minority myth emerged at the height of the civil rights movement. At a time when blacks called out white supremacy in the U.S., a counter discourse of the United States as supportive of minorities was marshaled and that was the model minority myth, one that's continued to dominate for over 50 years. The model minority somehow demonstrates the nation and the world that the U.S. isn't racist. The stereotype in effect divides minorities pitting one good group against another bad group. Lost within this dichotomous stereotypes are the many Asian Americans who experience economic insecurity, poverty, discrimination, segregation, underfunded schools and the like. Asian Americans are not monolithic. To conclude, we are all every single one of us caught in the structures of white supremacy, whites along with people of color. White people cannot deny how white supremacy privileges them. Asians too have to grapple with how we have been recruited to uphold white supremacy as its model minorities. In fact all people have to grapple with how white supremacy recruits us to be pitted against one another. Yet among the various groups there are some who already wield the power to be able to make systemic change and more often than not those who wield that power are white and sometimes they may be people of color including Asian Americans who lack the critical consciousness to understand how they may be unwittingly perpetuating white supremacy. I realize this is a source of great discomfort for many of you to hear but I am not here to paper over the truth. The task ahead of for those of you who wield the power is to grapple not just with more obvious forms of white supremacy but the forms that hide from view. It is constant, intentional, challenging and painful work to do the work of dismantling white supremacy but we must do it. The time has always been now. Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. I know that you boiled down a lifetime of study and experience into just a little about 10 minutes and we very much appreciate that. It's such a powerful sharing. Thank you. I know that people can look on your website and if you wouldn't mind using the chat feature to include maybe a reference or two that people can follow up. You mentioned at least one book that you have published. I know you have other materials that would help the folks attending here to follow up on the more substantive details that you have shared here. I hope others use the chat feature in a similar way to share information that we don't have time today to share verbally. Oscar. Thank you, Don. And thank you, Robin. Wow, that was... I can only imagine. Thank you so much. It's quite powerful and it's unfortunate we don't have enough time. I think I could listen to you all night for sure. There's so much more to be provided. So we're hoping that this evening is just the beginning of the conversation. So thank you again. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to go ahead and move on. We are still on schedule. So the next part of the program is an opportunity for folks to share some personal experiences, as I said, as a result of the recent board meeting. So we have a panel of local speakers that's going to be moderated by our own Stephanie Lynn. And so the panel consists of Jenny Tan, who's the Yolo County Public Information Officer, Lisa Yepsilinas, who's a community advocate, and then Steve Hiramoto, who's a retired farmer and a community advocate. And so I'll just very briefly read a little bit about Stephanie. So she, as you know, she's a TV journalist working with KCRA. Ms. Lynn is very distinguished broadcasting career here. And I'm going to just cut this short because there's a lot to read about Stephanie. Her career includes working at ABC 2020 in New York, along with assignments at CNBC Fast Money, The Today Show. She worked on audience operations with Late Night with Ginny Fallon and Saturday Night Live. She was recognized by the Associated Press for the Best Spot News covering the recent campfire. And Ms. Lynn was also crowned Miss Asian America 2015 and using that title to actively advocate for diversity and inclusion in companies around the world and used this platform to speak extensively on the topic. And so welcome Stephanie and thank you so much for your willingness to participate this evening with us. For us yours. Thanks very much Oscar for that very kind introduction and of course for organizing this incredible event and thank you of course to the board of supervisors as well and Yolo County for recognizing the importance of hosting a discussion like this. I also do want to take a minute to recognize the folks on the panel with me today. We have Steve Hiromoto. He is a Clarksburg farmer. I believe he's retired but actively advocating on behalf of the Asian American community. His family was sent to internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor and he is working to preserve Clarksburg history through restoring an 1883 Japanese schoolhouse. So he's here with us live today. We also have Lisa Salinas. She is also a community advocate and she shared a number of recent incidents that she had with Blayton racism while she was out shopping in the local community and by speaking up about it that ultimately helped lead to a resolution that was passed recently by the Yolo County Board of Supervisors condemning anti-Asian hate and xenophobia and a number of her experiences are also published in the Sacramento Bee and we also have Jenny Tan here with us. She's a public information officer with Yolo County. I've had the pleasure of interacting with her quite frequently through our work covering of the coronavirus so on and so forth and she's the mother of young children. She's shared with me that she's had discussions with her children about encountering racist incidents out in the community and she's also had some experience with some difficult folks out in the community via social media which she uses to communicate a lot of important information out to folks. So, you know, with that I'd like to start with a question to all of our panelists here and then we'll go into your specific platform but just to everyone who's on the panel here today you know, what have your reactions been to the recent hate incidents and how have they impacted you personally? Should I go ahead Stephanie? Absolutely. Yes, this is Steve. Also at this time I want to thank the county and the supervisors for sponsoring this program I think and hopefully it's very enlightening for everyone. It's very tragic what's taken place and I get Asian newspapers as well and events are ongoing almost daily. You find, you know, at one quarter of our state to another part of our country that's being affected. Personally, so far, you know, thank goodness I haven't personally been affected but I follow the Buddhist religion and one of our sister churches in Los Angeles was recently vandalized and I'm sure attribute that vandalism by racial hate. It's something that's, you know, I think very hard to understand and turn around. You know, we can put the blame on mentally ill and everything else but as we know history seems to repeat itself and it seems like more and more eye-click and at the root of a lot of this an event or current pandemic or maybe the war issue or a yellow peril issue that kind of triggers folks to, you know, take the offensive. So go ahead. I'll speak next. Welcome everybody. My name is Jenny and I'm the public information officer for Yolo County and when I started thinking about this last week it really came to mind for me that the trauma that people go through when they experience racism or discrimination is sort of like a cycle. You know, you go through the experience the first time that it happens to you. You get angry, you get emotional, you question why you specifically were targeted, why it happened to you. And then there's almost nowhere for this anger or these feelings to go but internally and then the feelings get buried under everyday life, you know, under work life, under being a parent, under looking strong, you know, doing the things that you have to do every day. They get buried but then they never get resolved. And then another incident happens or something you hear in the news makes this cycle start all over again. Even for me this morning when I started thinking about this conversation that we were going to have today I started to get emotional about it because those feelings and those experiences that I had gone through before either when I was younger or when I was out with my kids all of those experiences and those feelings came back and it made me angry. It made me question, you know, why us again, right? So I think it's important that we keep in mind that these incidences they happen and then they stay with us. So you have Asian Americans, you have Black people, you have Muslim people, you have people in the LGBTQ community where incidences like this happen to them and then it just stays with them where people are shouldering this burden, this invisible burden every day that only gets harder every year. So for me this is, that's what I thought about for that question. I'll go next. For me when I've been hearing and seeing these, the recent escalation and deaths my first thought was thank God I live in Yolo, Kelly. Thank God when I went to the local officials, public elected officials and told them my story, they believed me and then all of our allies in the Latino, Black, white, Jewish, Muslim, API, LGBT community stood by me so that we could try to protect at least in our postage stamp of the world that we could do the work before it got really, really horrible and it also gave me a brand new hero. My hero is that 75-year-old Taiwanese woman when the racist of 39-years-old punched her in the face she picked up a stick and beat him to self defend herself. She survived, he left on a stretcher. The GoFundMe account for her is almost up to a million dollars. She is poor, she is an elderly, she's an immigrant, she is still physically damaged and she is donating that almost a million dollars to fight racism against API hate and she said I will fight racism to the death which she did and she's surviving and she's our new hero so it doesn't matter what your age, what your income level, what color, how long you've been in the country you can help the community, you can help every person. So that's my takeaway and I'm grateful for all of you in Yolo County. You've been a beacon of light that has influenced Sacramento throughout California and I heard at a meeting with Ruth at a papa that we are influencing nationwide the resolution as an opening conversation. So what we're speaking of is such an important first step and the steps that Yolo County has taken with that resolution I think has sent a ripple effect to other areas for example Sacramento recently also passing our own resolution out here condemning anti-Asian hate. You know this next question is for Steve. Now do you see any parallels between the time your family was sent to internment camps and now in terms of people's behavior towards Asian people? Well as far as parallel issues I really couldn't comment on that we're still in an isolated area fortunately but I do worry about my daughters for instance they live in major ventures and areas and one of them always sends me emails and say hey dad you know you better now go walk at a certain spot or shopping somewhere else we heard that you know you might get in the problem and so they're feeling that and I certainly don't see that as a proper way for them to have to go through life at this point they and of course they have their own children as well and really hate to see the stigma carry on to my family but as far as probably hatred that existed after or during and after World War II I think it was really the hard work ethics of the returnes from the concentration camps that you know basically try to illustrate that they're American citizens and you know they're here for a purpose they're escaping poverty and a worse place for a better life and so hopefully that you know will continue so that's kind of what I have to say and you come from a multi-generational family that's been here for quite some time now have there been any sort of discussions that you and your family have had whether it's you know between you and your parents or that conversations you've had with your children or grandchildren about you know how to deal with instances of discrimination or racism in the workplace or just even out in the street well you know naturally depending on the degree of the attack be a verbal or what you know just try to remain out in the open try to gardener help from those around you you know if it's that prior degree certainly hopefully police or law enforcement would be able to assist and other than that you know it seems like as you know for speaking for myself if you don't go looking for trouble you try to you know state to yourself and hopefully you know that's enough to kind of blend in unfortunately I mean it's not hopefully a cowardly thing to do but you know it's just we all need to practice some kind of precautions you know no matter who you are you can feel when something's you're feeling jeopardized so but again you know hopefully my at least my daughter's would you know have the sense to go to somebody and be able to get immediate help if they're put in a predicament where they're endangered or similar thank you Steve and I want to direct that same question over to Lisa and Jenny you know I know Jenny you know you have young children you know what sort of conversations do you have with your kids about instances of racism and discrimination and have your kids experience that sort of bullying in school so every year without fail I have at least one or experience at least one incidence of racism or discrimination and lately it's been when I've been with my family with my kids and not every incident is full of violence you know the incidents can span the spectrum they can be obvious and overt or they can be subtle and covert and one story comes to mind and it actually happened with one of my sons at his elementary school one day when this happened before COVID my husband and I had the opportunity to pick up one of my sons from school so we were there the bell ringing kids are coming out of class we see my son coming towards us and then we also see another child who is looking at my son and then stretches his the corners of his eyes upwards with his fingers and my husband and I both stop and my husband asks the boy what are you doing the boy's grandmother comes up and starts apologizing right she can see right away okay that's not appropriate that's discriminatory however the principal the school comes over hearing that we're having a discussion and she says to us that the boy doesn't mean anything by it and I was shocked to hear this from the principal I was thinking you know how do you know he didn't mean anything by it in the two minutes span of this happening right and if the boy didn't mean it then it doesn't mean that this can't be a learning opportunity for everyone that's present about that specific action and the trauma that's attached to that action and you shouldn't dismiss the feelings or the distress that was brought up in my husband or I by seeing this this boy do that and then afterwards my principal the principal decided to talk to us in her office she pulled us into her office to talk about this and the principal is supposed to be the person who oversees the education the health of all the students on campus and we had a discussion with her I left unsatisfied you know she was still defending the student she could not see it from the perspective of Asian Americans who are under this trauma of seeing that action against us so there are actions actions like this that happen every day that help to perpetuate the ignorance and the attitude that it's fine it's okay in our country right and a lot of times these go unnoticed because they're small but they do happen all the time with my son you know he saw this and he knew that there was something weird in the situation but he couldn't quite put it into words he didn't really you know kids of that age don't really have a vocabulary for this right they don't know how to put those emotions into words and kind of explain things so we went home and I had to explain to him about racism about discrimination that it can come in a lot of different forms that it's okay to be emotional about it that it's okay to be frustrated and to be angry but what you do with those emotions is is what we can control right so I had a conversation with him about how to be how to turn that into a positive how to educate people about that that it's not his fault for looking a certain way or for being in a certain culture or for you know being who he is right and a kid in elementary school and we continue to have those conversations you know that was not the first conversation I've had with my son unfortunately but we continue to have them you know whenever there's an incident that happens in the news I try to have a talk with my kids about how this may impact them about what it means for our family for our culture even for their age you know to really show them that there is there is discrimination that happens on all levels that there is privilege that happens on all levels in that they really should be more aware of these things to be self aware either to protect themselves or to protect others and if it does happen to someone else while they're there that they do have the ability and the right to stand up and see something in these situations Alisa would you like to add anything to that I have three children and two grandchildren and my husband is Latino and so the conversations that I have with my family are not only reflective of what happens with the racism against Asians but also racism against Latinos and so we have had to talk with the public schools and also with different situations but our children were always trying to stand up for yourself and also we made sure that they were very athletic for any type of self defense that they would need to have and when they were growing up and Davis a couple of them were assaulted but they were really strong athletes so they were able to fight back and also just using the words and helping them understand their value as a child of God and that everyone is valuable and also I made sure to really that my children understood their culture and their history that they knew what the Chinese Exclusion Act is that they knew what the Japanese internment camp was that they knew that there would be no Cesar Chavez without the Filipino farm workers and Uncle Leo and the leaders and that they knew their Latino history and they knew their American history and their Black history so that they would be well equipped to be able to stand up for their rights and to fight so then my daughter has this great story about when she went to Cornell University and I think it was like the third week and she was in the labor department and the teacher said does anybody know who Cesar Chavez is or the Chinese Exclusion Act the next week and she graduated from Cesar Chavez Elementary in Davis and so you know right there she was ready to let everyone know because it's like why wouldn't you know it's a holiday in California and what do you mean you don't know about the Chinese Exclusion Act don't make me worried you don't know what the Japanese internment camp is so really knowledge is power as well as being able to physically protect yourself and to know your local government and who the people to call to to help you with their stranger danger or other things and we have to help each other out when I moved first up here to this division in Woodland it was my elderly neighbors that needed help because they were from other countries and they were being harassed and so we would do the charades and I would call the police for them and so we need to help each other out to take care of our elders and train our children and ourselves to be able to protect other people especially the vulnerable but it is a very hard thing to go through for sure and there's a lot of work you have to go through I mean I was traumatized six times and I know I'm working through it and there'll probably be more for me to work through but you know we're taking lemonade and making lemon cello and Cantonese lemon chicken and lemon rang pies and you guys are all welcome to come over and eat sounds like it'll be quite a feast all right so you spoke to the education piece of it right and I know that this is it sounds like a common thread between what all three of you are quite passionate about so you spoke about the Chinese Exclusion Act the internment of Japanese Americans Cesar Chavez I feel like a lot of us folks in this community who are people of color we take the time to educate ourselves on this but there is a wide swath of the population out there that isn't aware of you know that you know Chinese people were discriminated against for example so you know Steve I noticed I remember I recall reading in your bio that you know educating folks is such an important part of you know your personal platform and it's partly why you are really kind of championing the restoration of this Japanese schoolhouse right so can you speak a bit more about the education portion of it and why it's so important well I'm finding that my wife works for the local school district and so I'm somewhat familiar with what goes on curriculum etc and I've spoken with history teachers and what and they're not even aware of what had taken place with the internment situation against the Japanese Americans during the war time and so even living in the isolated area of Yolk County that I'm from we have not been exempt from you know the repercussions of during war time little about my family my grandfather came to the area in near Clarksburg in 1898 and he was escaping poor economic and social traumas in his native country of Japan he came by himself at an early age to Hawaii for a while and then made his way to the region that he had settled and that the world I am from right now and was able to work bring himself up to become an owner of a business he became his own crop farmer and so as the region grew in native labor if you recall the CERO program a lot of me do where we had sponsored workers from Mexico coming over those folks had to be sponsored by a farmer or so to be able to come over to work the field of Clarksburg or California and the situation was very soon within so a lot of folks came from his hometown area and came to came as a farm labor and settled around the Clarksburg area by the 1920s there were probably quite a few families by now wives had come or you know Order Brides had come over anyway families began appearing by 1925 the community was large enough where they wanted to build their own Japanese school house which they did in 1926 and there were probably at least a hundred students attending that school from kindergarten to high school but there were that many in that community and of course when the work work came out began and President Roosevelt's executive order cleared the entire west coast of all Japanese descendants whether you were born here or not and so you know men women and children were taken away from the homes my father's was taken to live at a Indian reservation in Gila, Arizona and my mother was sent to a prison in area up on northern California called the two-way lake and so they spent their warrior a lot of the folks upon the end of the war chose not to return to the Clarksburg area and so the numbers really diminished we still have a social club that is comprised of some of the original families from those early times and we we try to get together both socially and try to keep the history of that area going and tap but unfortunately as age takes a lot of the members and a lot of the families don't know what to do with their artifacts and remembrances and a lot of younger kids don't have anywhere to put it so I've become kind of a repository for a lot of these items and so therefore my interest schoolhouse that you speak of has is no longer there as something that I can or my group can use as a historical display place but the group in Clarksburg is trying to resurrect the original schoolhouse that served the community in Clarksburg in 1883 and so I've become a member of that organization and I see that facility as a place that I can display a lot of the artifacts and things that I have now and try to perpetuate the history of the Japanese American community that once existed in the Clarksburg area thank you very much for that just to wrap things up here and obviously so many more questions coming out of this great discussion but just last question for all of you real quick and because we just have about 60 seconds here you know what is your ask of the community and policymakers here to address this issue of anti-Asian hate in the community? I'll start or I'll be really quick I want to tell people take the blinders off your eyes at least one right at least one blinder off you know don't just say I'm sorry don't just say you know make excuses like really think about it right Asian people Black people Muslim people everyone on the spectrum those that have experienced discrimination have experienced the spectrum of this their entire lives so dismissing it or making it less than hurts so you know do something help someone speak out everyone has power no matter their position no matter their station in life their age their ethnicity everyone has power the world is not perfect the world is can be bitter it can be hateful but we can all act to make the better the world a better place even small actions right speaking up for another person standing up making sure that if you see that someone is leaving late at night you go hey let me walk you to your car or you see someone saying something to another person you say hey you know what I don't think that's appropriate so it's going to take a lot of steps you know this is not a one size fit all or one action kind of solves a problem but you know open your eyes be self-aware that this is happening every day to every to a lot of different people my request is to understand that this violence and hatred towards api hits every sector that we know of it hits healthcare it hits education safety it hits small businesses it hits employees the university public safety for everyone it's hitting children families workers singles seniors everyone and if we can address this of what we can do to be more loving what can we do to help these people that have been traumatized to not be traumatized and to move forward so that our biases are not destroying people's lives then we will be much stronger as a community and I thank you Yolo County for being a beaking of light you're much further than other counties across America and throughout the world this problem is happening throughout the world so as we work together creatively to make it better it will be a shining light for everyone else very good Steve 10 seconds you want to chime in on this oh yes I think as far as the county level I'd like to see them assist me in being proactive not in myself but you know through education I think more especially young people need to be aware of contributions of Asian-Americans and you know visibility has actually become more common nowadays we have Naomi Osaka just you know going to Tennessee and you at US Open we have Colin Maricala that's a PGA golf champs we have the Rock and everybody else but I think publicly more and more Asian-Americans are becoming visible and so hopefully an appreciation of what they've done and Asian general can be passed along the young people after all if they're going to and from work on their Toyota Tundra you know guess where that came from very good thank you so much Steven thank you to all of our panelists we certainly appreciate your time and your insight and for opening up and sharing such personal stories also know that you know KCRA we're working on a special with regards to anti-AAPI hate and just solutions that the community is working on to help address this issue and that's going to be airing I believe this Thursday at seven o'clock so thank you again to Oscar and the Yolo County Board of Supervisors for having us I'll talk to you thank you all right so we're going to move on Bernadette it's the floor is yours excellent thanks Christine if you want to pull up our options for breakout rooms so this afternoon you've heard from some leaders experts and community members and now it's time for you to share your thoughts we're going to break out into four rooms so you'll get to choose and this will be an opportunity for us to connect a little bit more with a fellow attendees here now bear in mind we only have about 15 minutes but in this time I'd like to just share some of your initial thoughts on this really important topic because we have limited time please be gracious listeners and also generous speakers who are concise so we can allow as many people as possible to share this space in the breakout rooms also note that this is not the end please stay tuned for the powerful closing panel where we discuss what actions we can take here in Yolo County so I'm going to briefly describe each of these five options the first group I'll be moderating on intercultural dialogue this group is going to focus on brainstorming opportunities to facilitate dialogue and cultural understanding this might involve brainstorming ways to highlight the diversity of our county's Asian populations as well as to find ways to connect with other groups that are facing hate and injustice this group will focus on building understanding across diverse populations the second group is going to be moderated by Robin Rodriguez it's going to focus on storytelling listening and mobilizing for change this group will explore opportunities to elevate individual experiences of racism and various forms of marginalization exclusion and exclusion rooted in the structure of white supremacy it will also give some visibility to the ways that APIs have collectively organized towards structural transformation attendees might come up with ways to lever events and the media to share stories about how to put a human face on these experiences these activities will focus on elevating and empowering voices in the AAPI community the third group will be moderated by Tara Thronson and will focus on safety so this group is going to focus on some near-term opportunities to increase real and perceived safety this group will focus on public safety and mental health services and the fourth but certainly not least a group is going to focus on healing and is moderated by Jackie Wong who's also part of our closing panel this group will focus on near-term opportunities to create healing spaces such as maybe healing circles ideas might include reaching out to spiritual leaders or holding real and virtual spaces for victims and survivors in contrast to the intercultural dialogue group which is the first group this group is really going to be internally focused on the individual rather than externally focused on the collective this group will focus on emotional and spiritual healing so please take a moment we should be prompted in just a moment if you haven't already to pick one of these groups and again please stick around afterwards if you have any problems check in with Christine and she can probably help you with assigning yourself for example if you're on the phone all right thanks so much just as folks who are arriving I just want to thank folks for being really generous and really candid and really honest in these groups hope you all got a lot out of it and I believe that some of you are interested in some of the recordings these breakout rooms weren't recorded but hopefully you'll be able to share the main recording and then also some of the ideas thoughts that came up and we'll move into a section on action items thank you Bernadette hi everyone I'm Dan Kim I'm the Interim CAO for Yolo County and it's my honor to be moderating this distinguished panel each of the three panelists are leaders within our Yolo community first we have Gloria Partida the mayor of the city of Davis welcome here next we have Shelton Yip a former trustee of the Yolo County Office of Education thank you Shelton and finally we have Jackie Wong our vice president of the Washington Unified School District in West Sacramento hi Jackie thank you all for participating now I have a number of questions but I think in the interest of time I'm probably gonna have to cut down the number of questions I ask but I do want to ask all of you kind of what ideas or suggestions from the great breakout room resonated with each of you so why don't we start first with Shelton I mute myself things that we've been hearing over throughout the day was the importance of the whole ethnic studies piece and really having that as a base it's not as Kelly would say it's not the cure all it's just one of those things of having that information and making sure that people across the spectrum of groups understand the importance and the roles that everyone has played in terms of our society in terms of the building of our country everything else we're not just those people we're not the ones that have the Chinese restaurant down the street our forefathers are and they really played an important role in terms of where our society is today thank you Shelton Mayor Poetitid do you have anything to add yes so I think that we spoke about mental health and safety and I think that what really resonated with me was the importance of making sure people knew that they could report hate crimes and incidents and that that message got out into the community and that people knew that there were resources available to them for reporting and that their community was standing behind them thank you Mayor Jackie any golden nuggets from your group a lot of golden nuggets but I think just kind of within the context of the entire night so thank you all for putting this together I had the benefit of being part of the healing group and what's interesting to me is what we were talking about is the the reactions the emotions that were raised because of the stories of the earlier panel all right we talked a little bit about the microaggressions that we all as people of color were experiencing right and how that actually is changes DNA as research has shown and that actually transcends generations and how do we heal from that what do we do we talked about the possibility of you know what does restorative justice look like you know moving from just perpetrator to victim right using Lisa's story but also the community has been watching this and how do you heal as a community and where does that you know what is our responsibility to to to that right in an authentic and real way and create spaces and I had thought we were going to report out I was going to sign Garth to report out but I will report out is that like and it starts with us as we think about K-12 and COEs or even I would say even pre K-12 right what are we doing what are the education systems are we creating safe and healing spaces right I've shared that my daughter didn't feel that it was safe to to even talk to me a school board member about what was going on which is horrible like that she didn't believe that she was going to be believed because nothing was going to happen mommy right when we shared earlier is that she's so grateful that we're having that she's like mommy you're having an Asian lives matter forum and it begins there allowing her the space and K-12 and all of us allowing space for healing so that she can feel confident in reporting as Mayor Pertita had shared like the spaces that the civic spaces that we are allowing for bullying to be reported but again if children don't feel comfortable in their motion and actually naming the structural racism that they are being educated thing that the that they are experiencing this then how can they actually really access the avenues for for justice right so how do we actually talk more about healing but I would also say it's not just the victims but it's us all watching that right and talking about it I don't know if I've done it done it justice starts poke about it beautifully in terms of just authentic real emotion just being real about it and calling it out and calling it in and saying hey we can get through this together right because I was I was struck by everybody in that that subcommittee's emotion like their own personal historical trauma that was being raised because just because of the prior panels so thank you Jackie while we're on the subject of safety I think all of you have seen these videos of anti-Asian American violence but I don't know you thought this but I was struck by the number of bystanders who did absolutely nothing in the face of this violence so I'm going to turn to you Jackie quickly what do you make of this and how can we change how bystanders respond um no pressure here I think that I know it's about power right when you first see it people don't know how to react there is a shock and awe of like just processing is this really happening and then the question becomes what is my role in that right and I would say just again Jenny and others have shared this is that this has happened every year in my life and every year in my child's life right like that they've had friends who watched them get bullied get done the you know slanted eyes things or you know just different things over time how do we actually as educators and community members just teach teach folks that bystanders like that how do we empower young people right how do we empower others and the adults that who stand by too I think Jenny was was was sharing that the principal came over and said oh you know that that they didn't mean anything by it that's a bystander response right seeing it happen not understanding that they're needed to be healing in that moment and of a validation of the experience right so it's not just the kids that we are we have jurisdiction over educating but also our staff right when we're saying that this is not just a student issue this is also a staff issue because it does actually happen on staff on staff as well right and so I would say that one it's powerlessness and then those who actually are buying it does harm to them right that those who actually if we don't understand if we don't create opportunities for people to grasp onto their power to change and intervene and saying it's okay right as long as it's safe right that it's not that you know there isn't you know other forms of kind of violence that could happen with the intervention but actually that they can have permission and the power to step in and intervene that's what we need to teach people right because if they could be walking away and doing harm to themselves about the guilt of not doing something as well right it's interesting I as you all know that I also am an instructor at university we do bystander kind of training on for example sexual harassment but why don't we do that actually when we think about a structural racism right like there's a mandate for like you know actually I just went through it a little while ago of like we go through this kind of if you see somebody being sexually harassed verbally or whatever you intervene and there's training for that but we don't do that for actually structural racism and that's something that I would kind of think about right as a as an opportunity that's a great point yeah great point so turning to the next question maybe Mary with Pratidia you can speak to this how do you think we can promote better relations among Asian-Americans and other communities including other communities of color so I that's a great question so I think that it's really important the ethnic studies piece has been brought up multiple times and there is a reason for that the reason being that you know learning about other cultures is really important and and understanding each other is really important I think that as communities we can we can extend that we can extend that learning and have more art and cultural events and and promote as much as we can so that the community is not siloed into their you know little areas and and don't get to interact and don't get to meet their neighbors I think that those you know are some of the things that we can do we you know talk a lot about hiring a more diverse workforce and they think all of those things bring communities together and I do want to add a little more to the last question the Davis Phoenix Coalition is a non-profit that I've been working with for a number of years now and we work on you know diversity and inclusion and we have once a year we do an upstand or carnival for elementary age children and the purpose being to give people tools or to give children tools for what to do when they see a classmate being bullied and it's very similar to what you do as I'm sure they do this for the sexual assault but you know sometimes just going over and standing next to that person gives that person an instant ally and you know children are often very afraid to step into those situations and even as adults we're very afraid to step into those situations and so you have to sort of you have to practice and you have to start young and so you have to start with children just saying that's not okay I mean you have to have a script right for for when you see that and just saying that's not okay is is really easy and as I said just standing next to that person you know sometimes we'll tell kids if you're too afraid to do anything go and get someone and that applies for if you see you know somebody being if you see a hate incident happening or a hate crime happening you know go and get someone call the police or you know just bring more people to the space and so there there are a lot of great you know how to be an upstander instructions that that people can find and I encourage everyone to educate yourself on you know what to do in those situations very simple things but they can be really powerful to the person who's aggrieved thank you Shelton did you have anything to add so much to add but it's like running out of time but one of the things that I did do is I was you know when we talk about meeting with and learning more about I started listening all these different people that are so important that I have a voice out there and I started listening this is funny they were all females like Gloria Partita with the Phoenix coalition you know Jackie I've worked with Jackie on mental health issues and we're going through with that and you know Robin with you know with age America studies I told my group that you know I was a graduate of age America studies over at UC Davis and she's keeping up the good fight I kept going on and Sandy home and all of them so we have the the voices out there that we can learn from and work with and that's important one of the things that I I'm going to borrow from from Edram Kendi this one statement that says you know when all they see is what I am and he talked about a black man but I talk about an AAPI man or Latino or or Native American and what I am pronounced when I am what it pronounces what I am and it's we're not a virus but they they apply that to that I'm not a criminal you know on on the above and the embodiment of danger this produces the fear and this is the fear that is out there that gives permission to the white supremacist and anyone else to to attack and this is one of the things that you know and I know that you know we live in a very polarized society and and and and it comes down to this one and I know that Jake I think Jake is still on the call there but he was talking about the fabric of a society that you know he is learning from or learning to and trying to change with things and and when we talk about the fabric it's everyone on this call and it's everyone else out there because each and every one of us has a part of the fabric of society which each are held responsible to make the change and that's the challenge that we have in front of us one of the things that Jackie you spoke about in terms of you know what is it that we can do as as an individual you know and there's something that we've been teaching kids in elementary school about bullying it's the same thing if you see something say something and it's important and we have to teach that we kept hearing throughout this whole evening about educating and about communications and the process what is it that we'll take to make sure that everyone understands what it is when they talk about hate crimes I'm I really appreciate what happened at the Board of Supervisors meeting yesterday with with the anti-definition there again and also that you know we had the Attorney General or not the Attorney General but the Attorney speaking to the Attorney General we have a new Attorney General Rob Bonta hey I mean that's cool stuff but one of the things we learn I'm sorry I'm ADD if you didn't know this one of the things that that we have to do is that we really need to keep this on the forefront and keep educating as Rob said earlier you know we have this this dormancy that happens well we can't have that happen because things like what happened to Jenny what happened to Lisa what happened to you know Steve what happened to all of us it happens every day so one of the things that you know we have to do and I told my group that I was in you know I had this I have an opportunity of meeting with principals across the state of AAPI we have 100 about 150 160 170 of them that I meet with every every couple of weeks and we talk about the issues around this and then allies within that group and one of the things again comes down to Jenny and that principal and I like I said I was taken back and I had to sit back and take a deep breath but it's one of the things that we're doing in AXA the Association of California School Administrators along with the California with the school board's association is we have a whole equity task force that's going on that's looking at policies across the state making sure our policies meets the needs and meets what it is that is necessary to educate our students at the level necessary to end the cycle that we're in and so the ability to meet with them to talk with them is so important because I hope that none of them will do what happened to Jenny I hope that we can continue to move the curriculum forward you know we didn't need to I mean we need ethnic studies but it should have been a part of you know it's like what are we missing here it's something that I took from my Asian American studies experience and when I first became a teacher and built it into my curriculum in terms of you know one of the things that could happen or you know the history of of the mind you know the the railroad workers all the above I know I I need to stop but what can we do everything that we're doing in Yolo County is worth the forefront and it's important and I really appreciate that thank you Shelton you kind of answered my last question which was what is a simple concrete thing that we as individuals can do to promote better racial understanding so I'm going to quickly turn it to Jackie or Mayor Portita a quick thing that you would do or each of us could do talk to your kids so I always tell people do not assume that your children are going to pick up your values by osmosis you know just because you are a you know practicing anti-racism doesn't mean that your kids are doing it or that your kids understand that and you know the example that Jenny gave with the principal happens a lot for adults because they're uncomfortable and you know they find those conversations to be uncomfortable well you have to take the discomfort out of that and make it just part of growing up you have to teach your kids to see race to see color to appreciate each other I had a I have a son who is who's got cerebral palsy he's in a wheelchair and when he was little kids would stare at him all the time they would just walk up to him and stare at him and sometimes kids would even believe it or not make fun of him because he couldn't walk and this is just this is just really kids being kids and so I would take that opportunity to just tell them say hello or you can ask you know why he's in this wheelchair and but just you have to talk to your kids thank you Jackie real quick for me again education and acknowledging racism as it is I think we are all really scared about the reaction right and I think people don't want to hear because they don't know how our friends will react and I think you call it out as it is right and that's why you know I'm going to double down on Bicenter training that is rooted in racism and acknowledging that we are I'll say education is rooted in structural racism right and unpacking that and calling it out for what it is and not ignoring it thank you Jackie I'm going to add one thing in a post-COVID world invite someone over to dinner tell them your story that'd be great and listen to that person's story so now I'm going to turn it over to Supervisor Dawn Saylor who's going to say a few closing remarks Dawn thank you Dan and thank you to everyone who's been so generous with your insights and your time this evening I think that all of us have learned a great deal both intellectually and from the heart this this was to talk about Dr. Rodriguez comments at the beginning to not paper over the issues that's really critical I think that there are things that we can as individuals do there are things that we as communities can do things that our local agencies need to be engaged in this is the perfect kind of topic for yellow leaders to focus on in one of our yet talks we don't take we don't do flip charts and sticky notes just to make priorities here what we do is we take these lessons these this deep thought that we've experienced here together back to our jurisdictions and back to our communities and we take actions there so I think each of us has some challenges here one thing that that I always try to do is understand what the what the essence of another person is and so when someone tells me a story from their experience it's critical that that I've listened to that story and accepted us as their truth and their their personal experience I don't have to have felt it to have empathy for it or to to believe that it's important to take action and that's that's what we have here there are people on this call from every community in Yolo County and there are people we deliberately set up the format for today's event so that the many of the prominent leaders in the API community in Yolo County were featured if you don't walk away from this with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the value of these people in our community then you're not paying attention you're not listening together Yolo County is strong we are we're like a redwood forest where the roots grow down into the ground and intertwine with one another and that's how we're able to stand when the winds hit is that we're intertwined together in a very deep connected way that's that's who we are this session has been recorded it'll be available to all who registered and to others who ask and we will we also have been keeping track of the chat feature tonight I hope that you've had a chance to take a look a couple of the highlights in the chat section Jim our colleague Jim Provenza has included references for ways to report hate crimes Dr. Rodriguez has given us a few references for additional sessions and literature I think that that we've just touched the tip of the iceberg for the stories and the truths that have impacted those who've spoken and we have yet to hear the hundreds and thousands of other stories that are too tender to be spoken now or from folks who were too frightened or too leery of sharing their experiences with us tonight I'm deeply indebted to my colleague Oscar Villegas for our shared work on tonight's program and to all the members of the planning group who've worked so hard to put this together in a short time we usually spend about three months planning one of these sessions we'd spend about about three weeks doing this one and it and I'm really really so grateful to you all Oscar did you have anything that you would like to add before we close? I just think this was a wonderful evening thank you all for taking the time I really do believe this is the beginning of something special please give us your feedback meeting get the opportunity to talk or have you heard this evening please don't don't be shy share share with any of us because we want to keep the momentum continue this conversation more to come for sure thank you it will be future yellow leader sessions and if you have ideas or topics you'd like to have us focus on you can email Christine Crawford at the her email address so thank you all and go about do good work for others thank you everyone thank you all