AAPI Leaders reflect on the impacts of COVID-19 on their communities, addressing issues related to healthcare, mental health, community outreach, and anti-Asian racism. The following interviews represent a moment in time; but the work of these leaders and their organizations remains ongoing. Please visit their organizational websites, linked on their respective interview pages, to learn more about their initiatives, programming, and progress.
KEYWORDS: Asian Americans, Asians, Pacific Islander, AAPI, COVID-19, pandemic, restaurant, elders, seniors, healthcare, mental health, anti-Asian racism, community, restaurants, Santa Ana, Orange County,
Video Transcript
[Community Impact of COVID-19]
Tricia Nguyen (Southland Integrated Services): I don’t know, where do we begin? So we got the shutdown order I think in mid-March. And I have three locations—actually, one of them is the health center. But the other two locations are non-medical sites. And so because of that, we decided [we] have to switch everybody to telework within two days.
Jennifer Wang (Asian American Senior Citizens Service Center): When COVID-19 first hit, I still remember that first Sunday—the Saturday was when they had the first confirmed patient in Orange County. That Sunday morning, we mobilized. We mobilized in regards to right now we need to call all of our partners that we’re organizing, like the Lunar New Year, and cancel.
Amina Sen-Matthews (The Cambodian Family): Now we had to switch. We can’t take you to the doctor, but if you can get to the doctor and you need help translating, call us. And so that’s what the case manager has been doing. The participants would be calling the case manager, the case manager would be on the phone, talking to the doctor, and helping translate. And so make sure that they understand whatever the doctor was saying, and following up with them and whatnot.
Zainab Syeda (South Asian Network): Our first response was just checking in and making sure that people knew they weren’t alone. And having materials in language created so that people know that we’re still here for them.
Andrea Wasawas (Coastline Community College): So at least for the students that we work [with], one of the challenges with COVID-19 is for students to transition from in-person to online learning. I think one, it was difficult for a lot of students just because they don’t have a lot of space, personal space, for them to do work.
[Rise of Anti-Asian Sentiment]
Mary Anne Foo (Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance): We’ve seen a really huge increase in mental health. People are feeling really a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression. People have lost businesses, we’ve had people want to commit suicide because they’ve just lost their business and had to shut down. As well as people are afraid to go out because of the anti-Asian American sentiment, [of] people blaming the community for COVID. And so we’re seeing businesses damaged, we’re seeing people attacked.
Ed Lee (Wahoo’s Fish Taco): Personally, I wasn’t attacked, none of my family members were. But we got a couple of phone calls and [they] left messages on our company. Voicemail, “To go home,” kind of a thing. I was shocked. Definitely, I was shocked. But they just left a voicemail.
Mary Anne Foo (Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance): But there have been so many reported hate crimes and hate incidences nationally. Right now for Orange County, we’ve seen an increase where a lot of people have been attacked, or things are said to them. Or if they’re outside or if they’re at a store that’s outside a concentrated Asian area people are blaming them for COVID. And some stores have also had their windows shattered and notes taken out. In Huntington Beach there was an Asian family who got a letter saying, “This is from your neighbors. Get out. You caused this all.” So a lot of things like that. There’s a lot of that going on.
Ed Lee (Wahoo’s Fish Taco): It wasn’t a good time to be more Chinese probably than any other race. But to the rest of the world, it didn’t matter whether you’re Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese—you’re Chinese at that point.
Sister Thuy Tran (Sisters of St. Joseph): We are all lumped into it being Chinese, under that category. And yet, they don’t understand that we are different, ethnically, culturally. And so all of this discrimination, racism, these gaps is because people don’t understand, and it’s easier to lump everybody together.
Jennifer Wang (Asian American Senior Citizens Service Center): So you know what we hear in the news across the country, within Orange County, physical attacks, People getting hurt, people getting beat up. Most recently an elderly man who is physically attacked on the bus. And then there are people who are being verbally attacked. And then there are those who read the news or read chats, and they’re actually very hurt by what they read. Because for some of them, I can say it’s sort of a wake up call, in terms of they didn’t realize how much hate there was. And they didn’t realize that it would affect them.
[Impact of Community Work]
Ellen Ahn (Korean Community Services): Nonprofit community based work is always eventful. Of course, right now living through the biggest pandemic in the century, COVID-19 is really important work for us right now. We are doing Coronavirus testing. And so I always think about how is COVID-19 affecting the Asian community, are the resources there for COVID-19 positive patients.
Audrey Alo (Pacific Islander Health Partnership): We looked at the numbers here in Los Angeles. Although our community is very, very small, we are very, very highly impacted, highly impacted. So I forget what the numbers were the other day—so they can talk about percentages, or they can say that out of 100,000 these many people are affected. But the most impactful numbers for me, are when we say that, out of my community of roughly 20,000 people in Southern California, 1 in 177 people test positive
Mary Anne Foo (Orange County Asian and pacific Islander Community Alliance): And also our workforce development services have really increased because people have lost their jobs, they’ve lost their businesses, and they’re not sure how to access unemployment or EDD services because it’s not in [their] language. It’s in English or Spanish only. And so we’ve seen a lot of help that we’ve had to do that way.
Ravi Seng Ly (The Cambodian Family): We’ve had unemployment application assistance, which is one thing we help with, rise over 500%. We have so many more community members coming to us asking for help getting these unemployment benefits because they’ve been laid off.
Ellen Ahn (Korean Community Services): Usually unemployed means you’re in need of dollars, like the stimulus or the assistance checks. But it also means you’re uninsured. And so we’ve been very busy getting people enrolled in Covered California and the other health plans, so people don’t lose their health care coverage.
[Impact on Senior Care]
Ravi Seng Ly (The Cambodian Family): Another big thing that we’ve been focusing on is making sure that our vulnerable seniors aren’t completely socially isolated. The really cruel or unfortunate thing about social distancing, about sheltering at home, or safer at home, is that a lot of our elder community members are in danger of being forgotten and are in danger of just being alone too long.
Jennifer Wang (Asian American Senior Citizens Service Center): And then after that, you know, looking at what happened in Asia, we started purchasing certain items that we knew we did not want our seniors out there to have to be exposed. Not only to the virus, but also we anticipate the discrimination and the backlash. So we ordered toilet paper, we ordered the oximeters, we ordered so many items, because we wanted to make sure our seniors’, number one, had the essentials. And number two, understood that there was somebody out there who was caring for them.
Amina Sen-Matthews (The Cambodian Family): For the community members, what I’ve heard from them is that a lot of them are kind of cooped up in the home. And before COVID, the agency, the community, The Cambodian Family Community Center, we offer a lot of workshops and exercise classes and meditation classes and things like that. And when COVID-19 hit, we had to close our doors. And a lot of community members are now at home, they’re like, “Oh, we miss all those classes. When can we go?” We’re trying to offer them all virtually, but it’s not the same, right? It’s not the same as coming into a building and seeing your friends and talking and communicating with them.
[Impact on the Restaurant Industry]
Ed Lee (Wahoo’s Fish Taco): In the restaurant business, so all the restaurants were shut down overnight. It’s going to take years to recover [from] the shutdown. I mean, it was probably necessary to shut down the United States, but our sales went down like 83%. So it’s almost [you] might as well just close the door, because you’re not making any money at that point.
Dee Nguyen (Break of Dawn): It is the apocalypse for the hospitality industry. It’s bad. If you’re a mom and pop [restaurant] like I am, most of the restaurants I know, two of my friends did not open up because you can’t. Because basically you die.
Tarit Tanjasiri (Crema Cafe and Crema Artisan Bakers): We started a community, a small community of friends, now selling all our stuff at this pop-up. It seemed like it was such a huge service for our community that we’re opening up and we’re selling stuff, but no, they are doing us a favor. They’re the ones that came in. So many people came in and supported us.
[Final Thoughts]
Andrea Wasawas (Coastline Community College): One thing that COVID-19 has brought is to AAPI so that they’re starting to feel that sense of discrimination against them. And I think COVID-19 has made that more known and more prevalent, but I think because of that we a lot of AAPI folks are able to kind of share experiences with Black folks and the Black community and the struggles that they’re going through.
Tricia Nguyen (Southland Integrated Services): But you can tell when you see COVID, you learn about your friend’s personality, your family members, it’s very interesting. When I have staff I think they’re great, [but] through COVID I’m like, “Oh, they’re no longer [great.]” And then the people that are not that good, right? And through COVID you see, their personality shines out, and they become very helpful. So I think [for] me, any disaster, anything hits, you can tell who’s your soldiers. Who’s your positive, your great folks. And you can tell people who you [used to] think they’re great, and then until this happen[s and] they become selfish, and they just do things for themselves. So I think it is overall, there’s no silver lining, but I see that you learn a lot from people[s’] personalities, and how they live and how to care for each other through COVID.
Tarit Tanjasiri (Crema Cafe and Crema Artisan Bakers): When someone says to me, someone young, like you guys, or my children would say, “Oh my gosh, Dad, I want your friends,” is pretty much what they say. “I want your friends.” And then [my daughter] revised it really quick, and she’d go “I want friends like yours.” Why? Is it because we recognize that friendship is and relationship is the biggest thing there is. There is no shortcut in relationship building. They may not be your closest friends, but if they are part of your trusted group and we do things for each other.