The Lunar New Year is an important and joyous occasion for our Asian community. January 22 was the first New Year day of the Lunar calendar this year. This is the time when families and friends gather to celebrate culture, enjoy delicious traditional food, and share well wishes for a brighter year to come. Just in Santa Rosa, there were more than a dozen Lunar New Year celebrations planned and scheduled by the Redwood Chinese Association and Sonoma County Vietnamese Association all around town. They worked in coordination with cities, libraries, museums, and a number of businesses in an effort to share their culture and joy with the larger community. The city councils of the cities of Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park offered proclamations to honor the contribution of the diverse Asian community in their cities.
The horror of the mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay in California on the first two days of the Lunar New Year shook us all to the core, particularly the Asian community. What happened? Why?
It was in this traumatized state of shock and grief that I attended the Rohnert Park City Council meeting on behalf of AAPIC to receive the Lunar New Year proclamation the day after the Half Moon Bay shooting. I spoke from my heart. I would like to share my thoughts with you here.
Grace Cheung-Schulman
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Grace Cheung-Schulman, Co-Chair, AAPI Coalition of North Bay
Remarks on the Lunar New Year proclamation on Tuesday, Jan 24, 2023
at the Rohnert Park City Council Meeting
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Mayor Rodriguez and Council members, thank you for inviting me to represent AAPI Coalition of North Bay to your City Council meeting to receive the proclamation in honor of the Lunar New Year celebration.
A year ago, I was at this same city council meeting to receive the Lunar New Year proclamation via Zoom in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. At that time, I spoke about how I, myself, and a group of residents of Sonoma County, concerned about the prevalent anti-Asian violence, decided to come together to form the AAPI coalition.
Fast forward one year, AAPIC is now a 501(c)(3) registered nonprofit. Our mission remains the same – to celebrate culture, empower community, and promote positive change in the AAPI community.
But the series of gun violence in the last 3 days, in my mind, have completely changed the urgency and core focus of these words.
To borrow a line from the popular Pogo comic strip from Earth Day 1971, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” It is no longer sufficient for us just to look out for enemies attacking us from outside. Our enemy is us – it is our inability to look out for our own people.
As minorities, the various Asian and Pacific Islander communities are strong and well-known for taking good care of their own.
The events from the last 3 days told us that keeping just to ourselves no longer works.
Who is hurting? Who is not being heard? Who needs help? Where do we get help?
A lot more needs to be done.
Firstly, and most urgently, the various AAPI communities need to come together to share information and resources to help each other. Because we are diverse in languages and cultures, small in number, and geographically scattered, we need to work together more closely as one community.
Secondly, we must have more sensible gun control laws. Growing up in Hong Kong as a teenager, occasionally I heard the horrific news about some “crazy guy” running down the street with a big cleaver knife attacking people. At most, one or two people would be hurt. But in the United States today, with guns and assault rifles which were designed to kill enemies in the battlefield, the death toll can be many times more.
Lastly, we need better access to mental health services. Mental health stigma affects all ethnicities, cultures, and nationalities, but Asian Americans may be more impacted than most. We need to work closely with mental health service organizations to improve outreach and access for our AAPI community.
Thank you for giving me this space to express what I believe are some very important steps we must take to prevent similar incidents here in Sonoma County. We want to stand in solidarity with all people and allies to right injustices.
I, myself, and my fellow community members within the AAPI Coalition pledge to work with government agencies, nonprofits, community groups, and allies to make it a better New Year to come.
🙏
Download a PDF version of the remarks here.