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Parents encourage kids to burn masks on steps of state capitol

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EVANGELICAL WHITE CHRISTIANS LOVE A GOOD BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES; ROCK N ROLL ALBUMS, BOOKS, ART, ETC.

Gustaf Kilander
Sat, March 6, 2021, 

Young attendees toss surgical masks into a fire during a mask burning event at the Idaho Statehouse on March 6, 2021 in Boise, Idaho. (Getty Images)

In a shocking video, parents can be seen encouraging their children to burn face masks in defiance of Covid-19 safety precautions on the steps of the Idaho Capitol building in Boise.

Children can be heard saying "Destroy them!" as they toss the masks into a burning barrel. A parent cautions the kids in the video not to throw in too many masks at once, telling them to "let them burn".

The video was posted to Twitter by Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Sergio Olmos, who also interviewed one of the organisers behind the event, who said it was a rally and not a protest.

Darr Moon, husband of Republican Idaho state representative Dorothy Moon, told Mr Olmos: "We're standing here today to reign back government, to reestablish our Republican form of government, a government that has balance between the branches."

He added: "We need certain boundaries and that's not what we have today. Our governor is appropriating money and pretty much running the show here in Idaho."


Organisers said that similar "burn the mask" demonstrations were being held in 20 other Idaho cities.


Another organizer lead the crowd of around 150 people in pledging allegiance to the flag.


As police told protestors to put out the fire, they simply told the officers to "get out of here" and to leave organisers "alone".


According to data from CNN, Idaho has suffered worse from the pandemic compared to some of its neighbouring states. 105 out of every 100,000 people have died in the state compared to 54 in Oregon and 66 in Washington state.

The state recorded its first case of Covid-19 on 13 March 2020, according to KTVB. The state's Republican governor Brad Little slammed the efforts of his own party to roll back his Covid-19 emergency declaration in late January, CNN reported.

Read more: State capitols reassess safety after violence at US Capitol

The Republicans control both the state house and state senate in Idaho.

Mr Little said: "I believe in my heart that what the Idaho Legislature is doing is harmful to our people and wrong for Idaho," adding, "I urge my partners in the Legislature to stop the political gains and do what is right for the people of Idaho".

Mr Little said the declaration was "critical" for the state to receive federal assistance.

The state senate later backed off the idea to end the emergency declaration, according to Boise State Public Radio.

Speaking to KTVB and looking back on his actions during the last year, Mr Litte said: "There were some federal programs that were directed to us that had we known earlier we could have prepared better."

He added: "The one thing I know for sure, the no-action alternative would have been a disaster. Nobody did that. You had to act given the magnitude of the pandemic."

Asked if he would open up the state fully like Texas and Mississippi, Mr Little said: "Texas and Mississippi are opening up to like where we are now. They're taking off their mask mandate. We don't have a mandate. They're opening up businesses that we have open. The only real issue in Idaho is gathering size, and as we check around with the hospitals to make sure they're okay, that will be the next thing."

Blasting President Joe Biden’s $1.9tn Covid-19 relief bill that passed the Senate on Saturday, Mr Little argued the bill would penalise states like Idaho which has remained largely open during the pandemic.

He said: "A quarter of a billion dollars of Idahoans' federal taxes would subsidize states that have kept people out of work! States such as California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and others would get more than their fair share under Biden's plan."

Asians were thought to be the 'model minority.' Then came 'receipt culture.'




Asians were thought to be the 'model minority.' Then came 'receipt culture.'

Claire Wangin read

In Sacramento, California, last Friday, a high school Spanish teacher made a slant-eyed gesture during a Zoom class. “If their eyes went up, they’re Chinese. If they’re down, they’re Japanese,” she said in a video recorded by a student. “If they’re just straight, you don’t know.”

Four months earlier, a U.S. marine threatened to shoot Chinese people in a viral video tweet. Addressing the group with a slur, he said, “China is going to pay for what they have done to this country and the world."

In another video recorded last July, a tech CEO taunted an Asian American family at an upscale Northern California restaurant, calling them an “Asian piece of s---.” Uproar over the clip, which has been viewed more than 1 million times on Instagram, forced the man to resign.


Fueled by former President Donald Trump’s anti-China rhetoric, the Covid-19 pandemic has unleashed an onslaught of hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islanders. In 2020, the group Stop AAPI Hate received more than 2,800 self-reports of coronavirus discrimination nationwide, from verbal harassment to physical assault.

Yet news outlets and federal agencies have been slow to recognize the threat and enact policy changes. For much of the past year, the Justice Department resisted calls from Democratic lawmakers and activists to proactively combat the public targeting of Asians. In the days before Lunar New Year, when surveillance cameras captured a spate of violent, unprovoked attacks against Asian seniors, top-rated cable networks spent little to no airtime covering the issue, according to the progressive research center Media Matters.

“Social media is an equalizing force not previously available to marginalized communities.”

Amid institutional indifference, social media and other digital tools have allowed Asian Americans to prove the various forms of discrimination they’ve long experienced, organize mutual aid groups and pressure authorities to respond.

Experts say "receipt culture," or showing evidence of a wrongdoing typically on social media, has helped change the way people see challenges for Asian Americans, long thought of as the "model minority."

“Social media is an equalizing force not previously available to marginalized communities,” Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director at the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council and a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, told NBC Asian America.

On Feb. 5, after failing to find much media coverage about four separate attacks on elderly Asians, the activist Amanda Nguyen uploaded a 30-second Instagram video. In it, she summarized each incident and called on newsrooms to report on the crisis.

“I decided, look, if the mainstream media wasn’t going to talk about this, then I’m going to turn to social media and talk about it,” Nguyen, a co-founder of Rise, a group that helps people write laws, said.

Overnight, she said, the clip racked up more than 3 million views, with more than 11 million reaction posts on TikTok.

The ensuing outrage has helped to spur legislative action.

In late February, California lawmakers introduced a bill that would allocate $1.4 million in funding to UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center and Stop AAPI Hate. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the NYPD’s Asian Hate Crimes Task Force would make a more concerted effort to monitor attacks in the subway.

Organizers today are increasingly leveraging new technologies to build scalable social and racial justice movements, Kulkarni said. She noted the precedent set by Black Lives Matter protesters, who used smartphone cameras to document police killings of unarmed Black people. Videos of frail Asian seniors being slammed to the ground, she said, have elicited a similarly visceral reaction from viewers, allowing them to instinctively grasp the gravity of the situation.

The footage, she continued, also helped shatter the notion that Asian Americans don’t experience violent crime like other communities of color because they’re white-adjacent.

“The enormous force of the model minority myth — that you’re all doing well, that your issues are not the same as others who are really suffering — is what we’re fighting against,” Kulkarni said.

Beyond social networks, technology has also made it easier for people to report verbal and physical abuse, helping grassroots groups gather accurate data on pandemic-related discrimination.

“Asians have had a harder time proving racism in a large part because, in general, people still don’t know the history and struggles of Asian Americans.”

Stop AAPI Hate, for instance, allows people to document bias incidents on an online form, which can be accessed at any time on a phone or laptop. Compared to a hotline, the method is more cost-effective and less intimidating for those who may not feel comfortable discussing traumatic experiences with other people.

Some experts, however, say it’s just as important to reckon with the limits of digital platforms, which are often more adept at eliciting emotional reactions than facilitating difficult conversations about healing.

“Asians have had a harder time proving racism in a large part because, in general, people still don’t know the history and struggles of Asian Americans,” said Stewart Kwoh, president emeritus of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, a civil rights organization that has been tracking anti-Asian hate incidents since the 1990s. “That’s the overwhelming problem we have to confront as a society.”

While social media has been “a game changer in the sense of establishing the extent of the problem,” he said, it’s been less effective at providing answers.

In recent weeks, some experts have criticized celebrities who called on their followers to help identify and arrest culprits of anti-Asian attacks, arguing that the approach could encourage vigilantism and increase policing in communities of color. Local leaders have also raised concerns about a large contingent of social media users who labeled many high-profile assaults as "hate crimes," despite having no evidence that they were racially motivated.

Because anti-Asian racism comes in many forms, Kwoh said, efforts to fight it cannot rely on law enforcement alone. Physical assaults, in fact, constitute a small portion of bias incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate. Seven of 10 cases involve verbal harassment like name-calling. A multipronged strategy to keep Asian Americans safe, he continued, has to include stronger civil rights enforcement and funding for agencies like the Department of Housing and the Human Relations Commission.

But such nuances, Kwoh said, are not easily captured on social media, and bias can be difficult to prove.

To more accurately assess the causes and growth of anti-Asian incidents, Nguyen said, “we need more in-depth data on the Asian community as a whole with more mainstream media attention on why these problems are occurring.”

There also has to be a culture shift, she said, that begins with implementing more education initiatives.

On TikTok, Asian American teenagers have heeded this call, posting punchy explainers about the long history of anti-Asian xenophobia and the way in which seemingly innocuous microaggressions can easily lead to violence.

But the effort, Nguyen said, has to move beyond social media. Integrating Asian American studies into public school curricula is crucial, she said, because “it’s hard for people to empathize with our pain if they don’t know our stories.”

Anti-Asian violence has surged since 

Covid-19. But it didn't start there



Maura Hohman
Sat, March 6, 2021,


Chinatowns across the country are struggling because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has impacted these communities far beyond mask requirements and limited restaurant capacity. An apparent rise in anti-Asian bigotry over the past year has also led to fewer customers for Asian-run businesses and a surge in violence, especially against older people.

In the San Francisco area, home to the nation's largest and oldest Chinatown, there have been at least 18 attacks against Asians this month alone, one of which killed an 84-year-old Thai immigrant, Vicha Ratanapakdee. In 2020, New York City police recorded 28 hate crimes against Asian Americans, up from three in 2019.

Last spring, activists started a national system for tracking discrimination and violence against Asian Americans and Pacific islanders, called Stop AAPI Hate. It received more than 2,800 reports of hate incidents between March and December 2020. According to NBC News, Stop AAPI Hate said 69 occurrences included racist language coupled with a physical incident. The nonprofit doesn't report those to police.


NBC News investigative correspondent Vicky Nguyen, who's reported extensively on anti-Asian sentiment, said via email that she sees these surges as "really disheartening."

"I knew anti-Asian sentiment existed long before the pandemic, but until now, I have never felt this level of worry for my parents out in public," she said. "It has instilled a sense of sadness that’s new for me."

Throughout history, "this yellow peril fear (has been) resurrected during times of war, pandemic and economic downturn," explained Russell Jeung, a professor at San Francisco State University and co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate. "The same fears and stereotypes ... (are) always sort of lurking underneath."
The first wave of immigration & the People v. Hall

With the first wave of East Asian immigration to the United States in the 1850s, "there was discrimination and violence ... right away," Chris Kwok, a board member of the Asian American Bar Association of New York, told "TODAY." "Since the Chinese were here first in large numbers, that set the framework for the political and social treatments of almost all other Asian immigrants."

Many Chinese people who emigrated to the Western U.S. during the gold rush were "driven out of town" out of fear they were driving down wages, he added. "They didn't want to accept them as American."

During this period, some 300 Chinese settlements were displaced, Jeung said. In 1906, a fishing village of 200 people outside Monterey, California, where his family lived at the time, was burned down, he said.

Kwok added that there were "many, many recorded lynchings and killings, but obviously not on the same scale as Native Americans and African Americans."

In the 1871 Chinese massacre, rioters killed 10 percent of the Chinese population in Los Angeles, about 18 people, according to the L.A. Public Library. Eight people were convicted of manslaughter, but the convictions were overturned and no one was retried. In 1885, white mobs in Rock Springs, Wyoming, murdered 28 Chinese coal miners, wounded 15 more and burnt down the city's Chinatown, according to the state's historical society.

An 1854 California Supreme Court case called the People v. Hall also set a dangerous precedent by ruling that an Asian person couldn't testify against a white person in a criminal proceeding.

"That understanding that there would be no legal repercussions for violence against Chinese people just changed ... the way that white people in America interacted with Chinese," Beth Lew-Williams, history professor at Princeton University and author of "The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America," said. "They were seen as open to attack."
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

In the spring of 1882, Congress passed and President Chester A. Arthur signed the first significant law limiting immigration into the United States, according to OurDocuments.gov. It legalized a 10-year ban on Chinese labor immigration, which continued in some form until 1943.

"It was the Chinese, who came in their numbers, that really pushed America to restrictive immigration laws for the very first time in history," Kwok said.

Perceptions in the 19th century that Chinese immigrants were the source of diseases like smallpox, leprosy and malaria, played a role in the act's passage, Jeung said, as did fears they were taking away jobs from white workers. At the time, many Chinese were out of work after helping in the 1860s to build the Transcontinental Railroad, completing the "most dangerous jobs on the toughest part of the route" and earning roughly one-third less than white workers, Kwok said.

Lew-Williams added that the Chinese Exclusion Act "tamped down on the number of Asian immigrants, and it deprived them of a place in American memory." Another reason the early violence against Asians isn't often discussed, she said, is that it was "effective. The violence was meant to push people out of communities, and in many communities, they succeeded."
San Francisco's bubonic plague, 1900

In March 1900, the discovery of a body of Chinese person suspected of having died from the plague led the health department to quarantine all of San Francisco's Chinatown, Jeung said.

"They allowed white people to leave, but they kept Chinese segregated there to get the disease," he explained. "The actual neighborhood was roped off some, barbed wire put up, and that's their approach to dealing with disease." He added that thousands were left homeless in Santa Ana, California, and Honolulu after residents burned down areas where infected people lived.

Later on, he said, "arbitrary health conditions" were used to justify detaining Asian immigrants at San Francisco's Angel Island.

Kwok sees current anti-Asian sentiment as "very similar" to this historical period. "The association with disease — they're dirty, they're contaminating our country — is consistent with the idea of the aliens that cannot become a part of America," he said.
World War II & Japanese internment camps

In the wake of the Pearl Harbor bombing, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order in 1942 that led to internment camps for Japanese people, regardless of citizenship, according to the National WWII Museum.

Almost all Japanese Americans — more than 120,000, per USCourts.gov — had to leave their homes and live in camps for the rest of the war. Although it was a violation of constitutional rights, it was considered an issue of public safety because of concerns Japanese Americans would help launch military attacks.

As Jeung described it, "Japanese Americans were seen as disloyal traders and incarcerated."

They were given just days before having to report to temporary "assembly centers," according to the museum. In one instance, families had to stay in horse stalls with dirt floors at a racetrack. The more permanent facilities resembled "Army-style barracks," with guard towers and barbed wire. They didn't protect against severe heat or cold, and there was little privacy. Still, Japanese Americans found ways to create a sense of community, establishing schools, markets and newspapers.

In 1948, Congress paid $38 million in reparations and 40 years later gave an additional $20,000 to anyone still living who'd been forced into the camps.
The civil rights movement

While the "explicitly racist" immigration laws fell in the 1940s, Kwok said, there still were restrictions on how many Asians could emigrate to the U.S. each year leading up to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. A 1917 act had established the Asiatic barred zone, which banned people from the Middle East to Southeast Asia from entering the U.S., Jeung said.

But the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act removed national-origin limitations, which had prioritized European immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Kwok said this change was a direct result of the civil rights movement and "the African-American freedom struggle."

"It was a response to (the idea that) maybe all the things that we did to keep America white, we need to get rid of those things," he explained. In fact, college students coined the term "Asian American" in the 1960s, inspired by the Black Power movement, Kwok said.

Also in the '60s, in response to poor pay and working conditions, Filipino American grape farmers started to strike, according to labor union United Farm Workers. In 1970, the strike, eventually led by Cesar Chavez, established union contracts, better pay and working conditions.

Although mistreatment of Filipino workers might not be considered explicit violence, “being exploited as workers has also been part of the rationale of (exploiting) Asian and brown bodies,” Jeung said. “They were seen as cheap labor, outsiders taking away white workers' jobs."
Murder of Vincent Chin & L.A. Riots

In the 1980s, the U.S. hit a recession, and the country's automotive industry was being outcompeted by the Japanese.

On June 19, 1982, two white auto workers, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, attacked 27-year-old Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American, with a baseball bat in the Detroit area. NBC News reported that witnesses said Ebens allegedly told Chin, "It's because of you little m—f—s that we're out of work." Chin — who'd been mistaken as Japanese by his assailants, Jeung said — died four days later. Ebens and Nitz were convicted of manslaughter but never did any jail time.

"It's another example of scapegoating," Lew-Williams said. "Anti-Japanese sentiment was rampant ... in the auto industry at the time."

Ten years later, in 1992, Los Angeles erupted in riots following the videotaped beating of Black man Rodney King by four police officers, who were later acquitted. At the time, tensions had been building between the Korean and Black communities in the wake of fatal shootings of Black customers by Korean shopkeepers the previous year and two shooting deaths of recent immigrants by a robber whom police identified as Black, NBC News reported. Some 2,200 Korean-owned businesses were damaged in the riots, according to research from Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American studies at the University of California, Riverside.

“As Asian Americans move into a neighborhood, they may face hostility for being different,” Jeung said. “The lack of protection from the police force is another example of ... state-sponsored violence. (The merchants) were calling for it when (police) protected other parts of L.A.”
Post-9/11 to present

In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror strikes, the number of attacks against people perceived as Muslim rose "exponentially," according to Harvard University's Pluralism Project. An analysis from Pew Research Center based on FBI data found there were 93 anti-Muslim assaults in 2001 compared to 12 in 2000. The same report also found another spike in anti-Muslim violence in 2016.

“Asian Americans are seen as Muslim terrorists, just by their appearance,” Jeung explained.

He also remarked that since 2018, “Southeast Asians are being deported en masse” due to laws enacted in 1996 allowing immigrants to be deported for crimes, even though no such laws were in place when the crime was committed. “Let’s say they commit a crime, they pay their punishment,” Jeung explained. “But then they get double jeopardy because they come out of prison, they get paroled, but then they get immediately deported.”

South Asians and Muslims today are in many ways leading today's movement against hate directed at Asian Americans, an example of "pan-ethnic solidarity," Jeung said. Current activists are also "learning from the wisdom of our elders who strategized and organized" after Vincent Chin's murder, he continued.

"Part of the progress is that we're standing on the shoulders of other previous activists, who have a lot of insight about how government operates, how racism manifests itself, how we need to be prepared and change the narrative," Jeung added.

Nguyen stressed the importance of people educating themselves about the contributions of Asian American communities as a means to help.

"This history is not taught in public schools the way it could be," she said. "When you don’t know people, it’s easier to hate them. ... Many more things unite us than divide us when we take the time to understand each other."

Asian Americans now see why we need to fight back against racism, not ignore it



Xiao Wang
Fri, March 5, 2021

My son entered the world just days before the lockdowns and quarantines spurred by the coronavirus pandemic started to sweep across the United States; this week, he turns 1.

But as the virus spread, so too did violence against Asian Americans, spurred in part by then-President Donald Trump’s repeated use of the term “Chinese virus” and the even more offensive (and deeply scientifically inaccurate) "Kung flu."

Advocacy groups estimate that anti-Asian violence surged, with nearly 3,000 incidents reported between March and December of 2020. For instance, last summer, an 89-year old Chinese immigrant grandmother in New York was slapped and set on fire; the victim chose to go unidentified out of fear and shame. In December, Filipino immigrant and U.S. Navy veteran Angelo Quinto was killed in his mother’s home by police who knelt on his neck for five minutes. The next month, Thai immigrant Vicha Ratanapakdee was slain while walking in his San Francisco neighborhood at 9:00 a.m.


In recent weeks, a series of viral videos showing racist attacks against elderly Asian Americans across the United States have stoked fears that violence against members of our community is once again on the rise. A 91-year-old Asian American man was pushed to the ground in Oakland, California, in early February; an Asian family's house in Southern California was repeatedly vandalized in February; an Asian man was beaten in an unprovoked attack on the New York City subway in March.

Although these recent news hits have shed light on violence against Asian Americans, anti-Asian American sentiment, particularly against Asian immigrants, goes back centuries.

The very first piece of major immigration legislation passed by the U.S. Congress was the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which barred all people of Chinese descent from entering the country. But beyond those better known “yellow peril” days following the Gold Rush and those of World War II, when Japanese Americans were locked in internment camps, history is heavy with government-sanctioned racism against Asian immigrants: Asian children were segregated in "Oriental" schools in California in the 1880s; the 1892 Geary Act forced all Chinese living in America to obtain and carry government identification proving their legal status; laws passed in 13 states, starting in 1913, barred "aliens ineligible for citizenship" — which many Asians were — from owning and/or leasing land; and Chinese immigrants weren't eligible to naturalize until the 1943 Magnuson Act.

These overtly discriminatory policies of the past have morphed in recent years to prejudice by association accompanied by violence, including acts like the murder in 1982 of Vincent Chin by disgruntled autoworkers who blamed Japanese car imports for Detroit’s decline and the killings of turban-wearing Sikhs following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (even though Sikhs had nothing to do with the attacks).

The attacks on and even murders of Asian Americans blamed for spreading that so-called “Kung Flu” is simply the latest in a long line of both government-promulgated anti-Asian racism and violence against individual Asian Americans for world events that had little to do with them.

Asian Americans, though, have often collectively remained silent in the face of both, and that collective silence by both our ancestors and those of us living in the U.S. today — stemming from cultural roots in staying quiet and a willingness to ignore that which we felt we could not change — has enabled the implicit racism against Asians to go unchecked.

For my parents, and many other Asian immigrants like them, establishing a family and an identity in America trumped everything else. They dismissed being repeatedly overlooked for raises while waiting for a green card as an “inconvenience”; when their bosses passed them over for promotions, they chalked it up to their “lack of English ability,” despite excelling at all measurable metrics.

Later, for me, “fitting in” became an excuse for an accommodation of the same unacceptable patterns my parents faced. I laughed along when my peers made fun of the smelliness of my school lunches, at my squinty eyes in pictures, and at my smaller physical size. When teachers first struggled to pronounce my name and then gave up altogether, I let it pass. I had grown up in America, but when people complimented my English, I still thanked them.

I deeply cherish the values of diligence and perseverance my parents passed on to me. From an early age, I was taught to put my head down, work hard, and excel — getting good grades, high SAT scores, admittance into quality schools, impressive employment opportunities — and not worry about what others thought of me if that didn't affect my achievements. Unfortunately, by prioritizing outward success, Asian Americans like me ignored an equally important imperative: to stand up for ourselves, our history and our rights.

The real world violence engulfing our community today is proof that the time has come to change that dark inheritance.

For generations, Asian Americans have been enabled American society to ignore or dismiss anti-Asian racism. We’ve put up with all of the “Ching Chong” name-calling as long as it doesn’t affect us getting to college. We’ve put up with being ignored in television and the movies as long as it doesn’t affect us buying a house. We’ve put up with not having representation in government, since we vote at a lower rate than any other racial group.

This is the result: It took three weeks for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to apologize for making a racist joke about Asian accountants during the 2016 Oscars ceremony that was criticized as #OscarsSoWhite and with no major Asian nominees. Over 46 seasons and 500+ hosts of "Saturday Night Live," only six hosts have been Asian and only four cast members — Fred Armisen, Rob Schneider, Nasim Pedrad and Bowen Yang — have been of Asian descent. Asians make up 13 percent of the U.S. professional workforce but only 3 percent of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and are the least likely group to be promoted into management.

For too long we’ve been passive observers, reveling in how much better America is compared to where we or our ancestors have come from, instead of actively shaping how good America could be.

More than two months have passed since the death of Quinto, and there have been no major marches or protests demanding justice for him and his family; there are no rallies scheduled for all of the many other Asian American men and women who have been the victims of hate crimes in the last year. I cannot sit silently on the sidelines anymore and I hope my fellow Asian Americans will join me.

There are countless ways to speak up and help things start to change. You can begin challenging co-workers who perpetuate Asian stereotypes, or speak out at PTA meetings about how racism in the schoolyard is affecting your child. You can vote; you can even consider running for office. It’s the least our children deserve.

And, yes, I will make my son do his math homework and learn how to play piano, but I will also teach him how to be proud of who he is. He doesn’t need to be ashamed about the size of his head, his face flushing after a beer or his last name. I want him to grow up in an America that will treat him equally as a U.S. citizen, and not one where he will be asked “But where are you really from?”

But if they do, I want him to be sure of himself when he says, "The United States. Just like you."

 

Letters to the Editor: Don't take anti-Asian hate as a given. Fight back against it

Fri, March 5, 2021 LOS ANGELES TIMES 

People participate in a rally to raise awareness of anti-Asian violence at Los Angeles State Historic Park on Feb. 20. (Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: Growing up, I remember white kids following me and chanting "ching chong" and "jap jap" while making slanty-eyed gestures. Well into my teens, I would walk into a restaurant with my family and we would be refused service. ("My low-level anxiety about being Asian in America has morphed into fear," March 3)

All those times, I burned with shame and humiliation. I wanted my folks to fight back, but while my dad silently steamed, my mom would say, "Shikata ga nai," meaning, "It can't be helped."

As an adult, I am subjected to inappropriate remarks that still wound. Reading about all the latest attacks on Asians has both saddened me and increased my anxiety. When will it happen to me? Will it be a physical or a verbal attack?

I don’t subscribe to the "shikata ga nai" resignation that pervaded so many people of my parents' generation. We need to stand up and raise our voices against hate and prejudice, because after they come for us, who will be next?

Cynthia Kokawa Lerner, Los Angeles

Ted Cruz ‘traitor’ billboards go up in his Texas neighbourhood

Gustaf Kilander
Fri, March 5, 2021


Ted Cruz en CPAC el 26 de febrero de 2021 en Orlando, Florida (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Ted Cruz is being hunted by mobile billboards accusing him of being a "traitor". Activist group Really American PAC posted an image on Twitter of a truck bearing a banner blasting the Texas Senator, encouraging followers to donate so that the activists can "stay in Cruz's neighbourhood, follow him to church and more".

The Super PAC says it is “dedicated to defending Truth, Democracy, Social Justice, and Environment” and is focused on “delivering high-impact political messaging” against right-wing politicians.

The group took aim at Mr Cruz after he voted against the congressional certification of the electoral college votes despite the ransacking of the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters on 6 January.


In a 17 January statement, the group said that “Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley deserve the most blame for firing up the violent mob of Trump supporters that attacked the U.S Capitol and killed five people”.

On the fundraising page for the billboard campaign, the group adds that “rioters who broke into the Senate were quoted as saying Cruz ‘would want us to do this.’ That’s why we’re crowdfunding these billboards in his hometown in Texas to remind his voters and neighbours that Ted Cruz is a traitor and also betrayed this country. He must face consequences, electorally and under the law”.

A video from Really American PAC calling for the expulsion of Mr Cruz and Mr Hawley has reached 3.7 million views on Twitter.

In a video by The New Yorker documenting the riot from inside the Capitol, a member of the mob says: "Ted Cruz would want us to do this, so I think we're good."

Read more:Follow live updates on the Biden Administration and the Trump post-presidency

A spokesperson for Mr Cruz responded in a statement on 17 January, saying: "As Sen. Cruz has said repeatedly, the terrorist attack on the Capitol was reprehensible, and the criminals who carried out the attack should be fully prosecuted. He has been clear, consistent, and unequivocal: violence is always wrong-whether from Left or Right-and violent criminals should go to jail for a very long time."

Mr Cruz voted to acquit former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial in which Democrats charged Mr Trump with inciting the insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January. Really American PAC argues that Mr Cruz is guilty of the same crime.

The Texan is one of many Republicans eyeing a presidential run in 2024, but the field is frozen in place as long as a run from Mr Trump is possible.

Mr Cruz's approval rating among his home state voters nosedived after he fled to Cancun in Mexico during the power outages and freezing temperatures in Texas, The Houston Chronicle reported. Authorities at first thought that at least 40 people died from the cold in Texas, according to The Associated Press, but theDallas Morning News reported that the real number is likely much higher and will take months to ascertain.

The Independent has reached out to Really American PAC and Mr Cruz for comment.

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Fact-check: Does Goldman Sachs oversee the Texas grid?
Chelsey Cox
Austin American-Statesman

A Facebook post: "DO YOU KNOW Heidi Cruz, Ted's wife, is managing director of Goldman Sachs. They oversee the Texas utilities."

Ruling: Partly False

Here's why: The state of Texas is still reeling from a historic mid-February snowstorm that overtaxed its power grid. More than 4 million people waited several days in frigid temperatures for power to be restored, USA TODAY reported.

Heidi Cruz, a high-ranking executive at investment banking company Goldman Sachs and wife of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, shares part of the blame for the outages, claims a Feb. 21 Facebook post.

"DO YOU KNOW Heidi Cruz, Ted's wife, is managing director of Goldman Sachs. They over see the Texas utilities," the post states.

USA TODAY reached out to the poster for comment.

Back from Cancun:Ted Cruz returned home from Mexico to a surprise mariachi band and more #CanCruz-inspired TikToks

The Cruz family made headlines in the aftermath of the Texas snowstorm for traveling to Mexico on Feb. 17, according to USA TODAY. Millions of Texans were still without power on the day of their departure.

Cruz faced criticism from his Democratic counterparts and the media and returned to Texas a day after landing in Cancun. The senator called the trip "a mistake," USA TODAY reported.

Heidi Cruz works for Goldman Sachs

Heidi Cruz began working as a vice president at the global investment conglomerate Goldman, Sachs & Co. in 2005, according to her LinkedIn page. She was promoted to managing director in 2012, according to a profile in Greater Houston Partnership.

Cruz was described as the "family breadwinner" in a 2018 profile in The Atlantic. She took unpaid leave from her job in 2015 to campaign for Ted Cruz when he ran for the 2016 Republican nomination for president, according to the story.

Does Goldman Sachs oversee Texas utilities?

Suspected ties between the investment banking firm and Texas energy surfaced on Twitter this month. A Feb. 20 tweet claimed Goldman Sachs, and by extension Heidi Cruz, has a "controlling interest in several Texas energy utilities."

TXU Corp., a Dallas-based energy company, was acquired for $45 billion in 2007 by Goldman Sachs and private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Texas Pacific Group, according to a company press release published on wsj.com.

The energy company was renamed Energy Future Holdings after the acquisition. The falling price of natural gas, as well as the cost of taking the company private, soon took a toll on EFC. The company collapsed seven years later after subsidiary Texas Competitive Electric Holdings filed for bankruptcy, The Motley Fool reported in 2015

.

The EFH website provides no further updates.

A representative from Goldman Sachs told Newsweek that the investment bank does not have a controlling stake in any U.S. energy company.

USA TODAY reached out to Goldman Sachs for comment.

About 90% of the state's power is managed by the nonprofit Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
Your stories live here.

The claim that Goldman Sachs executive Heidi Cruz, wife of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, works for a company that oversees Texas' utilities is Partly False. It is true that Cruz is a managing director at Goldman Sachs, but the company has no present ties to Texas utility companies. Goldman Sachs was one of three investors that acquired a Texas energy company in 2007, but the company went bankrupt seven years later. 

Sources

Austin American-Statesman, Feb. 17, "'An electrical island': Texas has dodged federal regulation for years by having its own power grid"

USA TODAY, Feb. 19, "Ted Cruz's trip to Mexico earned him widespread criticism. Will it matter for his political future?"

USA TODAY, Feb. 19, "Another winter storm slams Northeast, Mid-Atlantic; 224K still without power in Texas; Little Rock, Arkansas, ties 1918 snow record"

USA TODAY, Feb. 19, "Ted Cruz escaped to Cancun during a crippling Texas storm in a pandemic, and travelers have so many questions"

Energy Future Holdings, accessed Feb. 23, "Energy Future Holdings"

The Motley Fool, May 23, 2015, "Energy Future Holdings: How the Biggest Leveraged Buyout In History Became a Disaster"

The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 26, 2007, "Full Text of TXU Press Release On Firm Being Taken Private"

Greater Houston Partnership, accessed Feb. 23, "Heidi Cruz, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs & Co."

LinkedIn, accessed Feb. 23, "Heidi Cruz"

The Atlantic, Oct. 18, 2018, "Heidi Cruz Didn’t Plan for This"

Newsweek, Feb. 23: "Fact Check: Does Heidi Cruz's Employer, Goldman Sachs, Control Texas Energy Utilities?"

Fact Check: Does Heidi Cruz's Employer, Goldman Sachs, Control Texas Energy Utilities?

Lauren Giella  2/23/2021 NEWSWEEK

©Rick Wilking/Reuters Heidi Cruz introduces her husband, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, at a campaign event at in Davenport, Iowa, on January 31. 

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and family faced criticism over their trip to Cancun amid the power failure in the state. Now some people have turned their attention toward Cruz's wife, Heidi

The Claim

Heidi Cruz, who has an MBA from Harvard Business School, is a managing director at Goldman Sachs.

Some people on Twitter made the connection between Goldman Sachs and a merger agreement involving TXU Corp., the former parent company of Texas electricity provider TXU Energy.

Users claimed that Goldman Sachs has "controlling interest" in several Texas energy utility companies.

Guess who is managing director at Goldman Sachs which has controlling interest in several Texas energy utilities?

HEIDI CRUZ.— Jeras Ikehorn (@JerasIkehorn) February 20, 2021

The Facts

The Alternative Investments unit of Goldman Sachs was involved in the original TXU investment. Currently, the unit has no controlling stake in this or any other Texas utility company.

"A Goldman Sachs fund was part of a private equity consortium that bought TXU in 2007, but following the company's bankruptcy years ago we no longer had a stake," a Goldman Sachs spokesperson told Newsweek on Monday. "We do not have any controlling stake in any U.S. energy company."

In 2007, TXU Corp was purchased in a private equity acquisition by Texas Energy Future Holdings Limited Partnership, a group led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Texas Pacific Group and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners. TXU Corp was then known as Energy Future Holdings Corp (EFH).

As part of the deal, TXU's main entities were maintained. TXU Energy retained its name and was the retail provider of electricity, while TXU Power, the wholesale electricity generation, was renamed Luminant, and TXU Electric Delivery, the transmission and distribution utility, was renamed Oncor.

In 2014, Energy Future Holdings (EFH) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because of unsustainable debt and persistently low wholesale power prices.

In October 2016, certain subsidiaries of EFH, including TXU Energy and Luminant, announced they had emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy through a tax-free spinoff from Energy Future Holding Corp under the new parent company Texas Competitive Electric Holding (TCEH).

TCEH was later renamed and rebranded as Vistra Energy Corp, now known as Vistra Corp. According to Reuters, through its subsidiaries, Vistra is engaged in electricity market activities, including electricity generation, wholesale energy sales and purchases, commodity risk management and retail sales of electricity to end users.

"Goldman Sachs does not have a controlling interest in Vistra," a Vistra spokesperson told Newsweek on Monday. "Vistra is a publicly-traded company with only three shareholders holding more than 5% of Vistra's shares outstanding, none of which are Goldman Sachs."

A "controlling interest" means a shareholder owns a majority (50.01 percent or higher) of the outstanding shares of a given company.

Records from Fintel show Goldman Sachs Group Inc. filed a 13F-HR form disclosing ownership of 1,375,718 shares of Vistra Energy Corp., with total holdings valued at $27,046,000 USD as of December 31, 2020.

The shares are held on behalf of individual brokerage clients of Goldman Sachs and do not represent a position that Goldman Sachs itself has taken.

The Ruling

False.

Goldman Sachs does not have a controlling interest in any Texas energy utility company.

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Goldman Sachs Could Earn $200 Million From Polar Vortex Energy Trading

Actually collecting its haul could prove difficult in reality, however.

Rhian Hunt
(TMFRhianHunt)

MOTLEY FOOL
Mar 5, 2021 

During the polar vortex which brought searing cold to much of the U.S. and disastrous conditions to Texas, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and other big investment banks racked up hundreds of millions of dollars -- on paper -- through energy trading. Goldman is currently sitting on a potential $200 million gold mine thanks to the massive, prolonged intrusion of Arctic air, according to Bloomberg. But collecting its jackpot could prove tricky.

The bank earned the theoretical windfall both through financial hedges as well as by selling electricity and natural gas directly. A Goldman spokesperson, Maeve DuVally, said "as a market-maker and liquidity provider, we were positioned to help our clients manage their risks in that challenging environment," though the assistance also proved very lucrative, at least nominally.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

Anonymous sources with an inside view on the situation reported to Bloomberg that Goldman's executives believe they will only be able to collect approximately around 50% of the sum, or $100 million. This is due to the major fallout from the polar vortex, including government reactions, litigation, and the bankruptcy or potential bankruptcy of energy companies in the frigid meteorological event's wake.

Goldman Sachs wasn't the only bank to cash in on the deep freeze. Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) allegedly earned several hundred million dollars when Texas wholesale electricity prices skyrocketed 10,000%, the Financial Times reports, despite the bank having smaller energy investments than other institutions. The bank said its winnings are "offset by losses and reduced revenues related to investments in wind and other alternate power suppliers" but declined to provide actual figures.

TEXAS

Nearly three dozen power facilities that failed in the 2011 winter storm failed again in 2021, according to an analysis by ABC13.


Records show dozens of power plants repeat failures

Sat, March 6, 2021

Video Transcript

KEATON FOX: Hi there. I'm ABC 13's data analyst, Keaton Fox. We've been taking a look at power plants that went offline in 2021 versus the power plants that went offline in the 2011 winter storm. 10 years ago where that was the last time before 2021 that we had to see those rolling blackouts. Let me actually show you some of the data here.

All of the red counties are where power plants went offline in 2021. And as you can see, Harris County, very much a bright red county because we had quite a few power generation units go offline. 71 units at 11 different facilities across our area that went offline. We're

Getting this data, by the way, coming to us from ERCOT, who has released some of that data, but not all of the data. Only power plants that agreed to have their names released in this data set actually got released. And we know that there are at least three dozen of those power generation units that were offline in 2011 that went offline again in 2021.

Which would signify that if they would have done some of the things that had been suggested in a 2011 federal report-- There was a FERC Commission, a Federal Energy Commission that went over everything that happened in 2011 when we lost power, including winterization. They said if you go and you winterize these plants, it is a good possibility that we're not going to see this thing happen again. Well as we know, many of those plants, if not all of the plants, did little to nothing to actually winterize.

And then 2021 rolls around and we see everything happening once again. In fact, one of those CEOs, the CEO of Energy Energy, that many of you are very familiar with, admitted that they did nothing. That at least two of their plants were not prepared for the cold and that they had not taken the appropriate steps to make sure that things should have happened. I said it was Energy. It's actually Calpine Energy.

That's their CEO who said that they weren't prepared for that. We heard a lot of that testimony over the last year, but certainly, just again looking sort of at this data that we've gotten our hands on here at ABC 13, and then been able to analyze, we can see the impact. Again, across the state here, looking at all of the counties where there were power plants offline, the widespread nature of the problem. And winterization is at the heart of it, knowing that the cold actually knocked a lot of those pipes offline.

The water pipes froze that supplied those power plants as well. So a lot more on this, obviously. There's an interactive map below this video, if you're looking on ABC13.com.

If you're watching on one of our streaming devices, you can head over to ABC13.com and see all of the different plants that went offline. We're, of course, keeping our eye on all the data here at ABC 13. For now, I'm Keaton Fox, 13 Eyewitness News.