2024 SC African American History Calendar unveiled

Columbia, SC (WOLO) — The South Carolina Department of Education unveiled the 2024  South Carolina African American History Calendar.

The event which took place at the Koger Center for the Arts, is an annual ceremony held every year to highlight various individuals in the community who have made major achievements that have positively impacted society.

The 12-month calendar profiles individuals from across state of South Carolina chosen for their successes and work they’ve done that have shaped African American history and culture.

Some of next year’s calendar honorees include former Women’s Basketball , and current WNBA player A’ja Wilson, The late South Carolina Senator John Scott, Jr. , Judge Clifton Newman most recently gaining national attention while presiding over the Alex Murdaugh murder trial and former South Carolina N.A.A.C.P. President Dr. Lonnie Randolph.

To learn more about all twelve honorees you can click here to go toSCAfricanAmerican.com

Categories: Calhoun, Clarendon, Fairfield, Kershaw, Lee, Lexington, Local News, Newberry, News, Orangeburg, Richland, Sumter

In booming Grand Rapids, many Black residents left out of city’s comeback

“We’ve seen this uniquely affect our neighbors of color. As neighborhoods gentrify, our older neighbors are being pushed out.”

Like other areas in the state and nation, experts blame a crisis in affordable housing. 

Citywide, rents climbed by nearly 40 percent over the last decade, the 13th largest such increase among U.S. metropolitan areas, according to the group Self Financial.

In Eastown, two-bedroom apartments are now fetching $1,400 a month or more, while homes in the area sell for $400,000 and up.

Nearly 25,000 Grand Rapids renters and homeowners paid more than 30 percent of their income in 2019 for housing ─ a threshold for what’s considered affordable and able to meet other basic expenses including food, child care and transportation, according to Housing Next, an affordable housing advocacy group in west Michigan.

Housing Next estimates the city is more than 5,000 rental units short of demand, and Kent and nearby Ottawa counties will need 37,000 more housing units at all price points in the next five years to meet demand ─ about a tenth of that in lower-priced affordable housing.

“In order to achieve that level of supply, that’s more than $2.5 billion of investment over the next five years,” Ryan Kilpatrick, Housing Next’s executive director told Bridge.

Kilpatrick called that “an outlandish” sum that is unlikely to be met.

Across Michigan, according to calculations by the Michigan Association of United Ways, 1.5 million ─ or 38 percent ─ of households in 2019 struggled to afford basic needs including housing, child care, food, health care and transportation.  While those numbers are the most recent available, they don’t reflect the added stress low-income households face in paying for housing because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And those economic woes hit Michigan Black households harder, as 63 percent struggled to afford the essentials to live in their community.

 “I see affordable housing as one of our greatest challenges in the city of Grand Rapids,” Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss told Bridge. “There is clearly a disproportionate impact on communities of color.”

Bliss noted the city has taken steps to address the disparity, including low-income housing projects funded through federal tax credits and a newly formed affordable housing fund with a target goal of $25 million in funds by 2025. Bliss said the city has also amended its zoning code to allow multi-family units on residential corner lots, and ground-floor residential units in commercial districts.

Bliss added the city is considering establishing its own land bank agency to boost affordable housing, following the dissolution in 2019 of the Kent County Land Bank Authority.

“We continue to look at what else we can do,” Bliss said.

The exodus of Black families comes as the city overall is experiencing a resurgence in both reputation and population, regularly landing on lists of the best places to live for young people and anchoring one of the few regions in Michigan that is growing.

Now a destination, Kent County has reversed its exodus of young college graduates to cities like Chicago. From 2000 to 2009, the county lost more than 600 recent college graduates to Cook County, Illinois — but added more than two times that number over the past decade.

And while that may fuel upper-income growth, would-be Black entrepreneurs continue to face similar barriers to  Black households, experts say, in part because of the residual effects of decades-old real estate redlining that denied Black residents the chance to buy or rent homes in white neighborhoods.

“It’s all related to the marginalization of African Americans, largely due to redlining,” said Jamiel Robinson founder and CEO of Grand Rapids Area Black Businesses nonprofit.

“Other cultures generate wealth by leveraging their homes. Home ownership was one of those tracks into attaining wealth that African Americans were denied, leveraging that to enter college or start a business.”

Nationwide, 44 percent of Black families are homeowners, compared to 74 percent of white families.

That gap helps explain why the average net worth of white families was nearly 10 times that as Black families — $171,000 in 2016 compared to $17,150, according to the Brookings Institution, a progressive think tank.

And while the federal government banned discrimination in the home mortgage industry more than 50 years ago, there’s evidence many Michigan Black loan applicants still grapple with financial barriers to home ownership.

A 2018 analysis of mortgage data found that Black loan applicants in the Detroit metro area were 1.9 times more likely to be denied a loan than their white counterparts. In the Lansing metro area, Black applicants were 3.1 times more likely to be denied.

In 2020, researchers including an official at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research published findings that a $950 billion federal program aimed at shoring up business during the pandemic largely failed Black business owners.

According to the study, non-Black business owners were 30 times more likely to receive funding under the Paycheck Protection Program than their Black counterparts. Just 0.3 percent of Black business owners reported receiving funding, compared with about 9 percent of non-Black business owners.

Grand Rapids business owner Robinson recounted a series of departed Black-owned businesses that once stood along Wealthy Street as it bisects Grand Rapids’ east side: a beauty supply store, an African-American bookstore, a restaurant, a rib catering business.

“It’s different for African-American business owners,” Robinson said. “They face different battles, both in keeping their business and starting a business.”

As investment in Grand Rapids neighborhoods rise, Kareem Scales of the Greater Grand Rapids NAACP also said he sees the lack of access to capital by Black entrepreneurs as an ongoing barrier.

“We want to have a rising business community,” he told Bridge. “But it’s a two-edged sword. We understand the importance of redevelopment. But at whose cost and whose gains?”

Kilpatrick of Housing Next called for a series of measures to close the gap in affordable housing, including more affordable loan rates. His group is also seeking changes like less restrictive zoning that would allow multi-family units in single-family neighborhoods. But such measures often face stiff opposition from residents opposed to changes in the character of their neighborhood.

“It is difficult politically,” he said.

To Grand Rapids resident and Black business owner Synia Jordan, her extended family history paints a painful story of inequity that she says is still unfolding.

Clark Atlanta University Art Museum Fall 2023–24 Exhibition Season

From the venue:

“Hidden Gems: AUC Faculty and Staff Exhibition”

The Art Annuals created an unparalleled community of Black artists; this exhibit continues this tradition by celebrating the AUC and the growth of programs that focus on the visual arts, like the AUC Art Collective. Students are coming together to learn and explore Black Arts at Spelman Museum of Art and CAUAM but there is a population’s creativity whose work is unknown to all of us, the faculty and staff at CAU, Morehouse, and Spelman. The call for art was responded to by faculty and staff from a variety of departments and disciplines. Discover the depth of our community that is called the AUC, our Hidden Gems.

“The Audacious Platform”

“The Audacious Platform” foregrounds the significance of Clark Atlanta University as a site for the display and critical examination of African American art from the forties until the present. A limited survey of the permanent collection, it includes works acquired during the Atlanta Annuals (1942-1970), which was an ambitious and surprisingly bold endeavor that emphasized African American art in an era when black art was rarely considered in mainstream institutions. The works from the Annuals are contrasted with later acquired pieces that provide insight into the institution’s presentation of African diaspora art from the American and Global South.

From “Black Spring” to the Eternal

Inspired by Charles Alston’s 1962 painting “Black Spring” and a work from David Driskell’s “Young Pines” series, this exhibition highlights depictions of natural scenery and their metaphorical implications from the permanent collection. Ranging from visual commentaries about sociopolitical issues to the idea of transcendence, these works, which were created from 1905 to 2015, encourage reflection on the ways African American artists engage rural, urban, and cosmic landscapes to convey ideas about their place within society. It also draws attention to explorations of humanity in relation to spiritual and celestial realms.

“Wilay Mendez Paez: Portals to a New World”

“Wilay Mendez Paez: Portals to a New World” provides insight into the artistic practice of the Atlanta-based, Afro-Cuban artist. Wilay is the inaugural fellow for The Workshop, a multi-year Clark Atlanta University Art Museum initiative that seeks to close the distance between artist and audience by highlighting the steps fundamental to the creative process. The artist will conduct a series of public workshops illustrating the role of writing, sketching, and modeling in his work. He will also expand an existing project that uses sculpture rather than face covers to give visual form to masks as a broad concept. Masks, for Wilay, are more than a form of disguise and ornamentation. His sculptures, similar to performances in costumes in African and African Diaspora masquerades, draw attention to objects as conduits for reflection about social interactions. They conceal, protect, and serve as a site for developing new vantage points.

This project was made possible with funding support from the City of Atlanta/Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

For groups larger than ten (10), please email Sol Mason at dmason at cau.edu to reserve space for your group.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Student received racist card at Dover-Eyota High

… letter, allegedly given to an African-American student, included statements like “Black … commitment to addressing issues of racism and bias within our school … . Frie, Superintendent. For Related Stories: Racism  Dover-Eyota RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News

Celebrating 20 Years Of Seth Troxler And Talking The Current Music Scene: ‘There Is, In My Mind, No Longer A True Underground’

It all begins with thumping bass. Then, driving synths enter. Celestial tones follow before the drums kick in. Quick yet gentle beats take center stage, with tinkering tunes later making their way to the forefront. Elements of the song begin to disappear, bringing audiophiles back to the beginning. The sonic qualities slowly renter, but in a different order from how they started.

These are the sounds of “Moment.”

These are the sounds that started Seth Troxler.

This year, Troxler celebrates the 20th anniversary of “Moment,” which he created when he was 17 under his former alias, Young Seth. Shortly after, the tastemaker began going by his legal name and current stage name, Seth Troxler.

The sound designer saw early success as he played Berlin’s Panorama Bar mere weeks after finishing high school. His fame has catapulted since. He was voted No. 3, No. 2 and then No. 1 in the Resident Advisor Top 100 DJs polls. His three accolades were received in the 2010, 2011 and 2012 polls, with him reigning in the last year.

MORE FOR YOU

Troxler has graced the stages of esteemed clubs and parties, such as CircoLoco, Watergate, Fabric, Warung, Robert Johnson and Womb. He has also gotten behind the decks of famed festivals, including Movement Electronic Music Festival, ZoukOut, Tomorrowland, Glastonbury, Coachella, Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas, Wonderfruit, Sónar and Burning Man. From “stillWON’T4GETU” to “Dead Room; Trust; Dexter,” “Hate” and “Pills,” the producer has created numerous hits designed for the underground.

When defining Troxler’s sound, some might assume house or techno. This assumption wouldn’t be accurate as his catalog cannot be categorized as one style. When asked to describe his sound in three words, he says, “The best genre is no genre.” Although he hit more than three words, his answer is correct. His response stays true to who he is as an artist, adding, “I try really not to be definable.” His chameleonic sonic capabilities have led him to stay progressive throughout his storied career.

“I really try to play music from all different kinds of electronic music genres and outside [of electronic music],” Troxler says. “[With] so many different people, you can say, ‘Oh, they play exactly this or that.’ But I’m one of the few deejays where you turn up to hear me play, and you don’t really know what to expect. You’re like, ‘Oh, he’s doing this today or doing that today.’ I think my fans like that, but I guess some people like what it says on the can. For me, [my fans are] like, ‘Okay, he’s playing something totally different,’ which I think is exciting.”

However, Troxler is more than just a music producer. He’s a cultural commentator, entrepreneur, restauranteur and art curator. The recent launch of his Slacker 85 label is just one example of his vast and multifaceted capabilities.

The imprint focuses on fusing art and fashion, spotlighting culture and highlighting the eccentric, obscure and wide-ranging sounds that are coming from various artists and genres. One instance of the cultural aspect is seen in Lost Souls of Saturn, a live project that combines music, storytelling and technology to explore new ways to access human perception and challenge the ways we see the world. It has been showcased in renowned museums worldwide, including New York City’s The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), London’s Saatchi Gallery and Switzerland’s Fondation Beyeler. Lost Souls of Saturn is one of the many ways Troxler comments on the cultural zeitgeist.

“[Slacker 85] is about trying to find cultural moments,” the artist says. “Even the crazy things—the bats or the naked video with the dog—were all taken from very big pop culture moments. The bat video [was] obviously from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” where on the other side, the naked video was a reference to Stefan Sagmeister, a very famous Austrian [born] and New York [based] graphic designer. Everything I try to do always has these kinds of…there’s always this trail that goes back to some cultural moments. So I, really both musically and image-wise, try to find points in culture that can be exposed and turned into a tongue-in-cheek funny thing.”

According to the sound selector, the ‘90s have recently become popular. Troxler grew up in this era, which he says “was about the anti-hero.” He believes we’re currently in a cultural place where commercialism and wealth are idealized, and the “alternative” has been lost. He says music, culture and fashion have historically worked together to represent the current zeitgeist during any time period. He cites that 60% of United States residents live paycheck to paycheck, adding that England also faces a housing crisis. The Vanguard says there is a disparity between what is being shown on television and what is actually happening. He sees music and clothing as ways to represent current affairs, noting how vintage clothing was popular in the ‘90s because it was “what people could afford after the ‘80s and Reaganism.”

“I think the youth really have lost a feeling where they feel like they can actually gain anything, go forward, own a house or have a future,” the entrepreneur says. “So many people are living really in the now, [and] I think the music and the ideas that I want to push are reflective of that.”

Troxler says it’s “incredible how big club culture has come” since the start of his career. He says raving was a niche culture “for outsiders” in the ‘90s and the aughts. Now, he says, the scene attracts people from all areas of life, such as queer folks and Black people, and allows them to intersect and meet on the dancefloor—with them even creating their communities with those they meet. Troxler finds that the dance music scene is “much more [of an] open home for everyone to find themselves outside of somewhat cultural norms and really become these somewhat weekend warriors.”

“Years ago, it would be impossible to think artists like myself or like John Summit would interact, but John [Summit] and I are friends,” the Detroit-raised producer says. “There are so many different crossovers now between what the industry has become. There is, in my mind, no longer a true underground. With Beyonce’s new album and Honey Dijon working on that, and Luke Solomon and so many different underground producers getting Grammys for making house music…we’ve come to this full circle moment.”

The trailblazer says Jellybean and David Morales worked on massive pop records during the ‘80s and ‘90s. He says dance music artists creating mainstream songs is cyclical, and we are seeing it now so that once again, “electronic and dance music are at the forefront of society.”

Troxler recently relaunched his esteemed Tuskegee Records imprint, founded with dynamic duo The Martinez Brothers. The initial goal of the 2014-founded label was to uplift Black, Latin and minority talents. This is particularly notable as Troxler is a Black artist, and The Martinez Brothers, comprised of Steve and Chris Martinez, is a Puerto Rican production pair. Troxler says dance music was founded on queer folks and Black and Brown communities, but he and The Martinez Brothers realized hardly any artists in those spaces were being represented in the current scene.

“There were so few artists from our communities coming forward, and [dance music is] coming from these great legacies,” he says. “We’re like, ‘This is tragic.’ So we formed this label, Tuskegee, to elevate a lot of these voices. And then, this was years ago when the conversation wasn’t as [progressive], record labels and all these people were like, ‘Oh, that’s racist. You can’t only feature artists who are Black and Brown.’ We’re like, ‘Why not? It’s a cultural exploration.’”

Troxler says his intention wasn’t to segregate artists by ethnicity but to focus on dance music’s heritage. The label shut down four years ago, but it’s reopened with a focus on spotlighting emerging talent.

“[The Martinez Brothers and I] always thought it was important for us as established artists to support young people and try to create an image where people can also resonate,” Troxler says. “I think with anything, when people see people from their backgrounds—whether it be women artists, Black artists, whatever—it makes the idea or the dream seem more possible. I think what’s really important is representation and the more representation that there is, the more people start to realize that they can also be part of that dream.”

The Kalamazoo, Michigan-born artist believes the dance music industry has become more inclusive. He says that five years ago, before the pandemic, conversations around representation took place. Now, he says, he’s seeing “the fruits of that labor” with “so many more artists coming up from different backgrounds [and] really having a huge moment.” Troxler adds that people need to enter conversations about race and sexuality by being conscious of differences, which he sees more of, particularly with younger generations since they are “so much more aware” of those topics.

Indeed, Troxler boasts an illustrious resume with his career achievements, genre-defying sounds, artistic abilities in many spaces and work to champion underrepresented and burgeoning acts. The unbound producer follows his own path, one that is full of creativity and has an eye on what’s next. Keep watching Troxler. He is sure to continue to impress.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

R.I. Medical Society proposing to launch new medical charter school

PROVIDENCE – Pending approval from the R.I. Council on Elementary and Postsecondary Education, a very unique charter school could be launched next academic year to help address workforce needs within the health care sector.

The Rhode Island Medical Society has filed a proposal with the R.I. Department of Education to launch the Medical Preparatory Academy of Rhode Island, or “MedPrep,” for students in grades 7-12 from Pawtucket, Providence and Central Falls. According to the society’s application, MedPrep would provide students with unique opportunities to explore the medical field, as well as address existing disparities in the health care system by serving a diverse student population.

Dr. Bradley Collins, an associate professor of medicine at the Brown University Warren Alpert Medical School who chairs the Rhode Island Medical Society’s board, told Providence Business News the impetus in creating this school where children from underrepresented backgrounds “could have a head start” in graduate-level degree health care professions. According to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges noted in the proposal, African Americans, Latinos and Asians are underrepresented in medicine making up only 6.9%, 5.7% and 20.6%, respectively.

“We want to provide some equity to underrepresented groups,” Collins said. “They would receive age-appropriate medical education.”

– Advertisement –

The school would also be the first of its kind not only in Rhode Island, but also across the U.S. Collins said they researched to see if other similar charter schools that MedPrep is looking to be exist elsewhere but could not find any.

Collins also said there was a “community push” to help increase diversity and equity within the health care sector.

“It seemed like a right type of partnership to give kids an education that they may want and also to fill that [health care workforce] pipeline from the very beginning,” Collins said.

If approved, MedPrep will launch next academic year serving 156 students in grades 7-8, Collins said. He said those two years will be “intensive” to make sure the students are at grade level for math and English language arts scores – which have been low across most of the state of late – so they can properly learn the curricula to be offered at MedPrep.

From there, MedPrep will add one new grade annually over the next four years, with the full grade 7-12 operation in place by the 2028-29 academic year, per the proposal. When students reach the high school level at MedPrep, the goal, Collins says, will be for students to learn such subjects as cardiology, pulmonology and gastroenterology intermixed with state-required high school education.

If approved, the school’s students will be chosen via a March random lottery, similar to how students are selected annually for charter school enrollment. Enrollment will be evenly split between three municipalities – 40% from Providence, 30% from Pawtucket and 30% from Central Falls, Collins said.

The school, itself, will operate out of the former Bishop Keough Regional High School facility in Pawtucket. The proposal says the main school building has 12 full-sized classrooms, which Collins said the building is “ready to go” for classes, and its annex building has an additional 6,300 square feet of space for student learning and administrative office space.

The classrooms will have student furniture, pupil-use technology, hardware, and software, instructional materials including interactive boards and specialized medical supplies. One such medical tool the school will have is a “Syndaver,” which Collins said is a “fake cadaver” that will mimic heartbeat sounds and allow for students to study the human body.

The curricula will also include students learning on-site at doctor’s offices and other medical facilities, depending on grade level, Collins said.

“There are people who are supportive at Brown Medical School, so you’ll be able to experience what it is like to be a pharmacy student or medical student, really to get them life experience,” Collins said. “These could also include internships and volunteer opportunities available to the kids.”

MedPrep’s first-year operating budget will be $2.8 million, according to the proposal. Collins said that along with a $400,000 grant from an anonymous donor, the three municipalities funding the students’ tuitions to attend MedPrep will help fund the operating budget, per the state’s charter guidelines. The school will also seek grants going forward as well, Collins said.

Regarding staff, the proposal says there will be eight classroom teachers, an administrative assistant, the nurse teacher, and special education director will report to the school director in the school’s first year. From there, 11 additional staffers will be hired in years two and three, and then two teachers and a nurse-teacher will be brought aboard by the fourth year.

The proposal is set to go before the council Dec. 19. RIDE spokesperson Victor Morente in an email Monday to PBN said the department is finalizing its review of the proposal, which will inform the recommendation to the council. He also said the state has seen “great demand” in the health care workforce and understands the “desire to promote equity and create pathways for students in this space.”

If the council approves the society’s proposal, the “ball will start rolling” with staff hires between December and March, Collins said.

If the school comes to fruition, Collins said it will be another opportunity for students to understand that “your zip code doesn’t define your opportunity.” He said there are about 20,000 children currently on waitlists for charter school admissions. That, he says, speaks to the need for quality schools.

“I think all those kids deserve to learn in the best schools possible and we want to try to help at least provide them with the best opportunities,” Collins said. “If we can help some kids along the way and help raise standards for our schools, we want every kid to have an opportunity.”

(UPDATED 17th paragraph to include comment from R.I. Department of Education.)

James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.

Purchase NowWant to share this story? Click Here to purchase a link that allows anyone to read it on any device whether or not they are a subscriber.

Q&A: Sherry Hirota on 50 years of health advocacy in Oakland Chinatown

For as long as Oakland has been a city, Chinatown has been an important downtown neighborhood and cultural hub for the city’s Asian immigrant population. And for nearly 50 years, Asian Health Services—founded in 1974 to provide healthcare for many of the area’s low-income immigrants—has been a community pillar. 

The Oaklandside is partnering with Oakland North and Oakland Lowdown to examine what’s working well and what isn’t for people in our urban center. Read more.

.wpnbha .entry-title{font-size: 1.2em;}.wpnbha .entry-meta{display: flex;flex-wrap: wrap;align-items: center;margin-top: 0.5em;}.wpnbha article .entry-meta{font-size: 0.8em;}.wpnbha article .avatar{height: 25px;width: 25px;}.wpnbha .post-thumbnail{margin: 0;margin-bottom: 0.25em;}.wpnbha .post-thumbnail img{height: auto;width: 100%;}.wpnbha .post-thumbnail figcaption{margin-bottom: 0.5em;}.wpnbha p{margin: 0.5em 0;}.wpnbha.ts-2 .entry-title{font-size: 0.9em}.wpnbha.ts-2 article .newspack-post-subtitle,.entry-wrapper p,.entry-wrapper .more-link,.entry-meta{font-size: 0.8em;}

Illustration by Bea Hayward

On Oct. 25, a one-block stretch of Alice Street between 9th and 10th streets was renamed Sherry Hirota Way to honor the organization’s impact on community health and the woman who helped to lead it for almost half a century.

The granddaughter of Japanese immigrants who came to the U.S. in 1908, Hirota was a community organizer when she began working at the clinic in 1976. At the time, Asian Health Services was a one-room space with nine staff. Hirota became the organization’s CEO just two years later.

Today, Asian Health Services employs roughly 500 people and, according to a recent press release, serves 50,000 patients annually in Alameda County with medical, dental, and behavioral health care, in multiple languages that include Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Korean, Khmer, Mien, Lao, Mongolian, Karen, Burmese, and Karenni. 

As a neighborhood advocate, Hirota has made her mark on the city in other ways, too. She and others formed community coalitions that organized against local budget cuts after the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 and helped push Oakland officials to install pedestrian traffic signals in Chinatown after a number of fatal traffic collisions involving elderly pedestrians.

Hirota plans to retire by the end of this year. We spoke with her about how Chinatown has changed over the years, the history of Asian Health Services, and the role the organization still plays in the neighborhood. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

What does it mean now to have a street named in your honor? 

I don’t feel it’s really about me. It’s [about] the way Asian Health Services has approached everything, from language access to pedestrian safety to anti-Asian hate. And I think if that’s the inspiration that gets preserved in a street sign – it happens to be in my name – but really it reflects the work of all the really incredible staff that have been part of Asian Health Services. It’s important to commemorate a generational movement that began with community members and students in the ‘60s and ‘70s who sought to see a better life and give back to the community. 

Can you talk about that history? What was your life like at the time?

I came out of the ‘60s, and I was at San Francisco State, which had an active student body engaged in politics of the day: the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, and the need for Ethnic Studies. With that background, I was committed to being an organizer. Many students out of the ’60s not only created ethnic studies on campuses around the country but decided that it was important to come back and bring their skill sets into the community.  

Asian Health Services came out of what was called East Bay Asians for Community Action. It was all volunteers — students and residents who were concerned about improving not only health care but the lives of people in Chinatown. [They] became aware that residents in Chinatown were seeing the doctor at about half the rate of the general public. Language was the major barrier, as well as the affordability of health care. So they got together, had health fairs, and eventually started a free clinic that was operating part-time. 

I was a patient who went to the clinic to get care for my son, who needed to get into school and get immunizations. I enrolled in October 1975, and I fell in love with the clinic. 

What was Chinatown like during this time, when Asian Health Services first opened, and how has that changed? 

The community was probably mostly Chinese and elder Filipinos who had worked as farm workers and in the canneries. They were living in SROs. The community then changed. The Asian population doubled every 10 years from the ‘70s — it was 3% of the population in 1970 around when I joined the organization, and it’s currently about 33% of the county of Alameda.

As the population grew, it also became extremely diverse, with Koreans and a Vietnamese influx after the Vietnam War. Now [there are] Cambodian and Mongolian and Thai and other Asian groups. As each wave came into the community, Asian Health Services had the challenge of figuring out how to expand its language capability. We would work to do policy change so that the county, state, and federal governments would become more aware of these needs and changes.  

The idea that Asian Health Services came out of the activist movement really served us well. We modeled what advocacy should mean for a population that was either silenced or invisible when it came to health policy. 

Sherry Hirota stands underneath a newly minted street sign that was put up by the city on a one-block stretch of Alice Street in Oakland Chinatown to honor her work with Asian Health Services. Credit: Walter David Marino

In 1978, Proposition 13 threatened funding for community-based organizations, including Asian Health Services. Can you describe how that played out? 

[Patients] showed up at the Board of Supervisors, talking about what it meant to have no language access and how concerned they were that the county of Alameda might cut the funding to Asian Health Services. 

There were a lot of stereotypes, especially in the late ’70s when the community was really small, that Asians are kind of shy and don’t speak up. There was a rally and march down East 14th, talking about, “We’re immigrants, but we also pay taxes, and we deserve quality health services.” Patients came to Highland Hospital en mass, saying, “This is what we will face if Asian Health Services is closed, we’ll be standing in line and there won’t be anyone to speak and communicate with us.” 

A coalition was created between the Asian, disabled, Hispanic, and African American communities, and labor. Everybody joined forces, and it was everybody except the sheriffs who turned out, who said, “We are all important and we stand by each other because we are a social network of community-based organizations.” That taught us a lot about what solidarity means in the era of trying to do things to improve our community. 

You were also involved in a pedestrian safety campaign, beginning in 2002. What led to that? 

Many of our community members and patients were getting injured on the streets right below the clinic. One of our board member’s father got killed on the corner of Webster and 8th Street. The Chinatown community and some of our intersections had the highest rate of injuries from vehicle and pedestrian collisions in the entire city of Oakland. We got young people to document how it was impossible to cross Webster during the amount of time the signals allowed, and for the seniors, it put them at risk. 

In the end, we were able to move the city to install the first scramble system (all-way stoplights that allow pedestrians to safely cross an intersection from all directions at once). That has been a total success and a model nationally. 

Flash forward to today, and there is the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of anti-Asian hate. How have these things impacted the services at Asian Health Services, its patients, and staff?  

We were scapegoated, but in a certain way, we were also ignored when it came to the amount of response (to COVID-19) that needed to happen in our community. 

This coincided with this rise in anti-Asian hate. Our community and our patients would report people being pushed onto the BART tracks or somebody ramming their car into the little markets in Chinatown. So it was a very scary time, and we’ve been rebuilding our way back. 

And where do you see things now? 

We’re really on guard. We have new victim support services that are in the mental health realm. Providing a system that helps both case management and helping them heal, helping them report, helping them cope, is important. 

We’re doing an interesting project, working with the African American community, with West Oakland Health Center, bringing the patient experience and community experience from both and trying to bridge some of the cultural and day-to-day tensions and having a place to meet, a place to understand, and be very supportive. 

We feel it’s really important to go beyond the slogans of solidarity and build grassroots community-based opportunities to provide a vision going forward. Those are the things that I think will help us heal.

What are some of the changes you’ve seen in Chinatown over the last few years? 

I think that the area is very similar to all the challenges that we’re seeing in Oakland.  The pandemic has made people afraid, and go indoors. It was a ghost town for months. 

But I think the price we paid as a community is still something that we have to tackle head-on. We have to come out. We have to all show some leadership because people have gotten stuck in their homes and people have gotten more divided and scared. We need to step forward and show that we can embrace all of our communities, and embrace our culture and our diversity.

The community calls Asian Health Services the “Dragon Head,” meaning that Asian Health Services is always there to respond to the needs of the community and fight for language access, or fight for immigrant rights, or fight against anti-Asian attacks. It’s really based on the patients being involved in the organization, but also the staff, who are not just health providers — they’re ambassadors and advocates for the community’s needs. 

Community Volunteers Gather to Plant and Beautify 10 Fruit Trees at Liberty Street Garden

Community Volunteers Gather to Plant and Beautify 10 Fruit Trees at Liberty Street Garden – African American News Today – EIN Presswire

Trusted News Since 1995

A service for global professionals · Tuesday, November 28, 2023 · 671,299,281 Articles · 3+ Million Readers

News Monitoring and Press Release Distribution Tools

News Topics

Newsletters

Press Releases

Events & Conferences

RSS Feeds

Other Services

Questions?

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment