Asian American Federation (@AAFederation): In light of continuing attacks and violence against Asian Americans, download @AAFederation’s Stay Safe from Hate booklet in 5 Asian languages with strategies to stay safe. Share with your families and friends. Download FREE here.
Helen Zia’s Washington Post Op-ed (@HelenZiaReal): “Targeting Asians and Asian Americans will make it harder to stop covid-19”: Read @HelenZiaReal op-ed to understand how the recent attacks against Asians and Asian Americans is a recurring theme in America, but that we can do better than this, and we have.
Annie Anlin Cheng’s New York Times Op-Ed: “What This Wave of Anti-Asian Violence Reveals About America”: Read Anne A. Cheng’s @nytimes Op-Ed to learn about the uncomfortable truth about how attention to nonwhite groups is only as pressing as the injuries that they suffered.
NPR interview with Dale Minami: Educate yourself! @DaleMinami gives a lesson about the long history of anti-Asian discrimination and racism in the U.S. on @npratc @NPR. From Chinese Exclusion to Muslim and Sikh discrimination after 9/11.
Li Zhou’s Vox article on The long history of anti-Asian hate in America, explained: “Forever Foreigners” read @liszhou explanation of how this stereotype has been used for over a century to exclude, discriminate, and enact violence against Asian Americans.
#3 – Support AAPI Social Justice Organizations Taking Action:
#5 – Take a Harassment & Intervention Training HERE.
#6 – Diversify Your Sources – By interviewing and quoting Asian American experts. You can find many of them at The Asian American Journalists Association’s speakers bureau at AAJAStudio.org
Let’s do this! Thank you for caring and always in community,
Watch the short video to learn how a modern day women’s rights movement started and successfully marketed and executed. This is also a brilliant testament to strength in numbers.
All of these terms are acceptable. However, the consensus is that whenever possible, Native people prefer to be called by their specific tribal name. In the United States, Native American has been widely used but is falling out of favor with some groups, and the terms American Indian or Indigenous American are preferred by many Native people.
Enjoy the brief video of one of the most inspiring women in U.S. history, Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte.
According to the 2010 Decennial Census, 0.9% of the U.S. population, or 2.9 million people, identified as American Indian or Alaska Native alone, while 1.7% of the U.S. population, or 5.2 million people, identified as American Indian or Alaska Native alone or in combination with another race. This is an increase since 2000 of over 39%. With the upcoming 2020 Decennial Census, the population is expected to increase once again.1
Approximately 4,871,103 million American Indians and Alaska Natives are of voting age.2
About 29% of American Indians and Alaska Natives are under the age of 18, while 21.9% of the total U.S. population is under the age of 18.3
The median age on reservations is 29, while the median age for the total U.S. population is 38.4
According to the Census Bureau 2018 Population Estimates, the states with the highest proportion of American Indians and Alaska Natives are: Alaska (27.9%), Oklahoma (17.4%), New Mexico (14.5%), South Dakota (12%), and Montana (9.2%).5
By 2060, the projected U.S. American Indian and Alaska Native population is estimated to reach 10 million people, or approximately 2.4% of the U.S. population.6
HEALTH DISPARITIES
When compared to all other U.S. races, American Indians and Alaska Natives have a lower life expectancy by 5.5 years. This includes higher rates of death from chronic illness, including diabetes, chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, mellitus, and suicide.7
American Indians and Alaska Natives die of heart disease at a rate 1.3 times higher than all other races; diabetes at a rate of 3.2 times higher; chronic liver disease and cirrhosis at a rate of 4.6 times higher; and, intentional self-harm and suicide at a rate of 1.7 times higher.8
For American Indian and Alaska Native youth, the rate of suicide is 2.5 times higher than the rest of the country. It is the highest youth suicide rate among all other races/ethnicities in the country.9
TRIBAL ECONOMIES
American Indian and Alaska Native businesses had an estimated buying power of $115 billion in 2018, larger than many countries, including Serbia, Panama, Uganda, and Costa Rica.10
The number of American Indian— and Alaska Native—owned businesses totaled 272,919 in 2012, a 15% increase since 2007. The businesses’ total worth of receipts was $38.8 billion, up 13% from 2007.1
American Indian— and Alaska Native—owned businesses accounted for 12.9% of all jobs in the state of Oklahoma (96,177 total jobs), while they employed 27,300 jobs in Washington state, 41,700 jobs in Minnesota, and 12,840 jobs in Idaho. In Washington and Minnesota, businesses contributed $255 million and $539 million in goods and services, respectively.12
American Indian and Alaska Natives operated approximately 60,083 farms, comprising over 58.7 million acres of land, and conducted $3.33 billion in total sales, with $1.43 billion from crops and $2.11 billion from livestock and poultry.13
PUBLIC SAFETY & SECURITY
Tribally operated law enforcement agencies employ 4,500 full-time personnel and 3,000 sworn officers, as of 2008. There are 1.3 sworn police officers for approximately every 1,000 tribal residents.14
Tribal law enforcement, which comprises only 0.004% of the nation’s law enforcement is responsible for patrolling approximately 1% of the total U.S. population and 2% of the nation’s landmass.15
The estimated capacity for jails in Indian Country increased from approximately 3,800 in 2015 to 4,090 in 2016.16
The rate of assault (homicide) among American Indians and Alaska Natives is more than double the rate for the country as a whole among all races: American Indians and Alaska Natives have a rate of 11.4%, while all races have a rate of 5.4%.17
American Indians and Alaska Natives are more likely to experience violent crimes at a rate of two and a half times higher than the national average, and in comparison to all other racial/ethnic groups, they are two times more likely to experience rape or sexual assault crimes.18
84.3% of American Indian and Alaska Native women, or four in five, will experience violence in their lifetime. In addition, 56.1% of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experience sexual violence in their lifetime.19
About 59 percent of tribes have a tribal judicial system.20
Over twenty-five tribal nations govern lands adjacent to the national borders or land directly accessible by boat from the national borders. Tribal lands share 260 miles of international borders, which is 100 miles longer than California’s border with Mexico.21
FAMILIES, HOUSING, & QUALITY OF LIFE
In 2017, there were approximately 574,313 American Indian and Alaska Native families.25
The percentage of American Indian and Alaska Native homeowners who owned their own home in 2017 was 459,158 thousand. This is less than 1% of all owner-occupied homes and compares to a rate of 63.8% for the total U.S. population.26
The median household income in 2017 for American Indians and Alaska Natives was $40,315. This compares to $57,652 for the nation as a whole.27
The percentage of American Indian and Alaska Natives living in poverty in 2017 was estimated to be 26.8%. This compares to 14.6% for the nation as a whole.28
TRIBAL LANDS, FORESTS, & ROADS
There are currently 574 federally recognized tribal nations and Alaska Native villages, with the total land mass under American Indian or Alaska Native control comprising about 100 million acres. That land mass would make Indian Country the fourth-largest state in the United States.29
The Navajo Nation reservation would comprise the 42nd largest state in the U.S., and is larger than the following 10 states: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia. An additional 19 tribal nations are each larger than the state of Rhode Island, while 12 tribal nations are each larger than the state of Delaware.30
There are 305 forested Indian reservations which encompass 18 million acres of forestland, with 6 million commercial timberlands, 4 million commercial woodlands, and 8 million non-commercial timberlands and woodlands.31
In 2016, there were 161,000 miles of existing and proposed roads on tribal lands that qualify for federal funding. Of the existing roads, 75% are not paved. Lack of road maintenance has been cited as contributing to low school attendance by students from reservations.32
EDUCATION
American Indians and Alaska Natives attend post-secondary education at a rate of 17%, in comparison to 60% among the total U.S. population.33
At 32%, American Indians and Alaska Natives had the lowest rate of reported zero-absences from school among other race/ethnic groups, from a 2015 survey of 8th graders.34
For today’s Talk Less, Listen More Thursday Tip of the Day, I attest that this works. As a conflict mediator, this is a foundational tool I inform all parties involved before the mediation. It sets an important tone and is a critical a ground rule to achieving an effective mediation session.
Below are additional Talk Less, Listen More Thursday video tips to help us all cultivate compassion and empathy. It is through good communication skills that we—as a society—can get closer to peace and love. I truly believe there is nothing good communication can’t solve.
What are other tips and strategies to help us move closer to peace and love?
This is a topic near and dear to me. Since childhood, I understood very early on what racism, discrimination, and bias were. When you experience it continuously, it’s undeniable—it guts you at your core. I may not have had the intellectual words to describe it back then like I can today, but the feeling is visceral—the same—then and now. Sadly, I can say it’s a familiar feeling and for my parents too.
My parents gave their all to ensure a better life for their six children in the U.S. A better future than in war-torn, poverty-stricken Vietnam. Due to the Vietnam war, both maternal and paternal grandparents starved to death. Famine is one of many life-altering effects from war—all wars—not just the Vietnam War also known as The American War in Vietnam. So what are families to do? They migrate to much less inflicted places, like the United States. Often times, the only choice is to do so by any means necessary.
The U.S. originally belonged to Indigenous peoples until they too experienced a war, genocide, forced migration, re-education schools brought onto them by immigrant Europeans. Like most immigrants, these Europeans fled their motherland for freedoms not granted in their homeland. So instead, they left to colonize and design the United States of America as it is today.
As a history lover, history—for me—is everything. It determines and shapes our present and future. History is too often written by the winners. I would not be surprised if, for many of you, my brief video of Asian American Pacific Islander history provides new information. I truly hope so. But here-in-lies the problem—such omissions and ignorance continue to breed and justify bias, discrimination, racism, white supremacy, and the status quo in America, vis-a-vis the recent rise in anti-Asian bias and violence. This also hits closer to home because a friend’s mom was a recent victim of such violence in San Jose, California.
Hence, let’s all elevate the necessary visibility to this abhorrent rise in violence towards our AAPI elders and communities, support Asian/AAPI owned small businesses, and the organizations doing something about it:
Friendly reminder, every day I will be providing tips and the data and expertise backing it up. The goal is to support you in designing your best professional and personal life, wherever you are in your journey. It is never too late. I hope you find the daily tips useful, as they have been for me.
_Marketing & Communications Mondays _Trust in Yourself & Your Journey Tuesdays _Work Smarter Wednesdays _Talk Less, Listen More Thursdays _For Your Best DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) Life Fridays _Style Saturdays _Serve Positivity Sundays
Distrust and self-doubt are our most substantial limitations. Distrust in ourselves goes hand-in-hand with distrusting others. This is a life not fully realized but dictated by fear. Self-doubt often is frustrating, anxiety-inducing, scary as heck, and, for some, paralyzing.
My goal is to help you move through your fear—not to ignore your fear but acknowledge it as a life-long friend. It will always be a part of you. Thus, it’s essential to embrace it to live fully—a life with purpose and without regrets. The biggest risk in life is not taking one.
Through your fears, I’m also here to remind you that you already have everything necessary to re-love or fall in love with yourself. Consequentially, the flood gates will open to ownership of your desires, leading to courageous actions toward your dreams.
So trust your inner-voice and your abilities, no matter the outcome. As you likely have heard: It is not the destination but the journey that matters. Speaking from plenty of invaluable trials and errors, I couldn’t agree more. I am beyond grateful for every single one of them. Each one has been right on time.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your heartfelt love and support of my passion to boldly create positive change, especially through my baby, my artistic activism, Retrofit Republic. When I founded Retrofit Republic at 25 years old, I had no idea it would become the innovative social enterprise that so many of you championed. Thank you for believing in the good work that we were doing.
Going back down memory lane.
Award-winning singer, rapper, songwriter, musician, producer Anderson .Paak and rapper Dumbfoundead. Creative vision and wardrobe styling by yours truly.
I knew we were on to something unique. But the continual out-pour of our positive affect on you and so many illustrated that it was changing society to be better, to be more diverse, more inclusive, more equitable, to herald the beautiful diversity of individuals, races, cultures, backgrounds, gender presentations, body types, abilities and disabilities; and while changing culture to be more conscious of consumerism and its global ramifications such as the human and environmental costs of products and business practices.
Additionally, many studies have shown the greater benefits of diversity in the workforce such as increased revenue and fundraising, better and comprehensive ideas, improved efficiencies and productivity, significantly higher retention, and overall happier employees. So why not put concerted effort to institutionalize diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and policies in your company? It’s a no-brainer really.
These values continue to inform me in my continual nonprofit, social impact, and consulting work. As well as in the past four years, with the students I have been so fortunate to work with. With anything that I am passionate about, it becomes my life. I give it my all. Just like at Retrofit Republic, I gave my all to my students and families. I learned a ton. I am forever grateful for the transformations and relationships fostered. But I deeply miss the magical creative flow that I had running Retrofit Republic, where I had full creative license to collaborate and run my own vehicle of change.
Thus, here I am starting my next creative vision and consulting services site. Whatever your needs are such as how to:
_Start a nonprofit, social enterprise or business. _Lead a mission driven personal and career path. _Ensure your company and practices are rooted in diversity, equity, and inclusion. _Hire and train diverse talent. _Coach and develop your team. _Mediate conflict resolutions between your team members. _Execute an effective and productive staff retreat. _Market, communicate, and increase your reach. _Envision and execute an unforgettable marketing campaign from A-Z. _Create a unique brand and identity. _Market research to understand what competitive advantage you and your company has. _Develop a memorable tagline and elevator pitch. _Set-up photo and video shoots. _Style it all. _Dress and present yourself as the boss that you are or strive to be. _Lead and inspire a team. _Plan and execute your organization’s anniversary event.
I got you! Or you simply want to share what creative endeavors you’re working on or content that inspires you.
Keep doing you and believe in yourself. If you don’t, then why should anyone else? Trust that your firm belief will manifest.
“Your journey has molded you for the greater good. It was exactly what it needed to be. Don’t think you’ve lost time. It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now. And now is right on time.” -Asha Tyson.
Let’s create your best self and live y/our dreams together.
Thank you J.K. Dineen for your words, beautifully capturing her story and immeasurable impact.
Thuy, cảm ơn chị. I love you.
Community, if you have the means, please consider donating to Thuy’s Go Fund Me.
Thuy’s memorial in front of her mural at entrance #5 at Ocean Beach, San Francisco on 12.12.20.
Thuy Nguyen, an educator who shaped the lives of hundreds of San Francisco kids by transforming a small Western Addition retail space into a freewheeling urban classroom and neighborhood clubhouse, died Friday of cancer. She was 41.
Together with her husband, Shawn Connolly, “Miss Thuy,” as the kids called her, created the San Francisco Skate Club on Divisadero Street near Alamo Square. The name was somewhat misleading. If it was a club, it was the least exclusive club in San Francisco: Any kid who walked through the door was automatically a member.
Families paid what they could to join — many paid nothing. And while skateboarding was central theme of the club — the small, ground-floor space was full of skateboards and grip tape, trucks and wheels — it was also a knitting club, a filmmaking club, a homework club, a cooking club, an art club.
“Everything with S.F. Skate Club was a labor of love for Thuy and Shawn,” said Sunny Angulo, a legislative aide at City Hall who was Nguyen’s best friend for 23 years. “Everything.”
Thuy Anne-Marie Nguyen was born Aug. 8, 1979, in Newport Beach to Peter Thinh Nguyen and Tinh Thi Tran, refugees who immigrated from Laos to the United States in 1976. She was raised in a tight-knit Vietnamese community in Costa Mesa.
She knew from an early age that she that she wanted to teach and in 1997 was accepted to the University of San Francisco’s five-year masters of education program. While still in college she started working at the now-defunct nonprofit Friends of the Children, where she mentored a cohort of 12 girls.
She remained there until 2006. By then she had met Connolly, a professional skateboarder who tended bar at the Milk Club on Haight Street, and the couple started working on the concept for what would become the Skate Club.
The couple first took over an old Victorian at Eddy and Broderick that was owned by a woman Nguyen had met through Friends of the Children. She and Shawn lived in what was called the Thrive House rent free in exchange for operating it as a youth center where she tutored kids and ran afterschool art and cooking programs.
“We would do cooking classes for the kids in the big fancy kitchen, and throw them luaus that they would help plan for their graduations or other milestones,” Angulo said.
In 2007 Nguyen and Connolly leased the S.F. Skate Club space fixing it up themselves.
It was soon filled with kids in afterschool programs and summer camps. Nguyen and Connolly carted them to skate parks around the Bay Area in an old van, and the space became a place where kids, many of whom did not have adult supervision or computers at home, could do their homework and work on art projects. They brought groups of kids to publc hearings at City Hall to testify in support of skate parks.
“Thuy and Shawn would drive out to public housing in the Bayview to pick up a kid just to make sure that they got to be in the program,” Angulo said. “They would send them home with helmets for free and even food.”
The skate club attracted kids who felt like outcasts. Many were being raised by grandparents or by single mothers working long hours.
Talayah Hudson started going to S.F. Skate Club when she was in fifth grade and a student at Rosa Parks Elementary School. Thuy would cook with her and help her with homework. When Hudson’s grandmother became too sick to care for her, she went into foster care but spent her afternoons with Nguyen, who helped her get a scholarship to attend the exclusive Convent of the Sacred Heart.
“I would not have graduated high school without her,” Hudson said.
When Hudson left for college Thuy took her to Target for supplies and drove her to Sonoma State University.
“Everybody else was surrounded by their parents, there to move them in and support them,” Hudson said. “I didn’t have that, but I had Thuy. Thuy was there for me.”
Nico Hiraga, the professional skateboarder and actor who appeared in the film “Booksmart,” said he met Nguyen when he was “a little dude” of 9 or 10 years old.
“She was the backbone of the skater community,” he said. “Shawn would take us out skating and she would help us with our homework. She was that skater mom who helped raise us, kept us out of trouble.”
Lorraine Luna’s son, Jessie Luna-Abrams, was struggling in school and rebelling against his parents when he discovered the Skate Club.
“For him it felt like Skate Club was another branch of the family,” Luna said. “I always knew he would be fed and always have his skateboard fixed and he would have homework help, which was a big deal to me.”
In the months since Nguyen got sick, the Skate Club community has been fixing up the club house’s backyard to have an outdoor space in which to gather during the pandemic.
They pulled weeds, planted flowers, built benches, painted furniture, strung lights. The garden was nearing completion as Ngyuen passed away. In front of the clubhouse a memorial to “Miss Thuy” has sprung up.
Luna, a candlemaker, poured 67 candles in glasses she found on the street. She slapped a “We love Thuy” sticker on each candle. Some of the candles burned on the Divisadero Street sidewalk, but most of them were taken home by Skate Club kids.
“It’s like Thuy’s spirit is still flickering throughout the city, shining a little light on everyone,” Luna said.
In addition to her husband, Thuy is survived by her parents, Peter Thinh Nguyen and Tinh Thi Tran, brothers John and Tan Nguyen, and sister Jolynne Nguyen. There will be a private Catholic service for the family, and the S.F. Skate Club is planning a social distanced memorial at Ocean Beach, time and date to be determined.
-J.K. Dineen for the San Francisco Chronicle. All photos in this post by me.
In front of San Francisco Skate Club.
If you were moved by her legacy and how she gave her fullest to help our youth and those most vulnerable, please consider donating to Thuy’s Go Fund Me. Thank you from the bottom of my healing heart.
