Silent no longer: Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders rally in Hermosa Beach
‘I never felt white enough in Manhattan. I wanted to fit in. No longer.’ -- Mira Costa High student Maddie Feng
Mira Costa Asian American club president Chloe Crouse and vice president Maddie Feng.
South Bay Cares co-founder Courtney Lingle.
Samuel Liu, Senator Ben Allen’s chief of staff
Joker’s Hand’s Kevin Kawano and Matt Lau.
Hermosa School Board member Margaret Bove-LaMonica discusses the school district’s social equity programs.
Hermosa Beach Police Chief Paul LeBaron.
Hermosa Beach mayor Justin Massey emphasizes Hermosa’s welcoming of all people.
by Kevin Cody
“You can’t legislate away hate,” Sam Liu, chief of staff for State Senator Ben Allen, told a rally on the lawn of the Hermosa Beach Community Center Sunday afternoon. “We need our friends and neighbors to tell their friends and neighbors that hate crimes are something we won’t stand for anymore,” he said.
The rally was organized by South Bay Cares and LA against Hate to address hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Mira Costa student Maddie Feng told the audience, “I never felt white enough growing up in Manhattan Beach. I wanted so much to fit it. I went along with all the jokes. Until this year. Now I call people out.”
Feng and Chloe Crouse, who also addressed the rally, are members of the Mira Costa Asian American Club.
Crouse told of being ridiculed at school because her Korean lunches smelled different. They were made by her grandmother, who worked as a seamstress while making sure her five grandchildren were well educated and well fed.
Emcee Sandra Endo, a Fox 11 reporter, and Hermosa Beach resident, said, “There are two pandemics. COVID-19 and a pandemic of hate crimes, spurred on by scapegoating.” Endow’s grandmother was sent to an internment camp during World War II.
Liu said he didn’t experience discrimination growing up in Torrance. He felt the community embraced diversity. “Especially in the restaurants and grocery stores,” he said.
“We need to remember America’s wonderful, anti-racist history, including events like today’s rally,” he reminded the audience.
“But we also need to remember the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the WWII Japanese internment camps and the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin.” Chin was beaten to death in Michigan by two, white auto workers who blamed the auto industry layoffs on Japanese competition. Though Chin was Chinese American, he was mistaken for being Japanese American.
Hermosa Beach Police Chief Paul LeBaron, School Board Trustee Maggie Bove-LaMonica and Council Member Justin Massey were among the dozen speakers.
“I may not look like you, but I represent all of you,” Chief LeBaron said. He quoted Robert Peel, “The father of modern policing,” who wrote in 1829, “The police are the public and the public are the police….”
Massey said the lifeguard tower next to the Hermosa pier will be painted in rainbow colors this summer, as a welcoming sign to minorities.
A common theme among the speakers was the need for minorities to work together.
“A hate crime is a crime against an entire community, not just an individual,” Endow said.
Nina Tarnay, a Manhattan Beach attorney and mother of three children, brought focus to the issue with a recounting of her escape from Vietnam.
Following the Vietnam War, her father, an attorney, was imprisoned for two years. Upon his release, he was determined to flee with his wife and four children.
“The only way to leave Vietnam was to go to a rural fishing village and find a smuggler to take you away by boat. In 1977, my dad and my two older brothers fled this way, and after six days at sea were rescued,” Tarnay said.
“Over the next year my mother plotted our escape. My younger brother was two years old. I was six. We went to a fishing village on the day we were supposed to leave, but were told the escape was canceled. My mother went to retrieve her things from the boat at 11 p.m. I heard her wake to go. I wouldn’t let her leave, and made so much noise she was afraid I’d wake my grandmother and little brother. So she let me go with her. When we got to the boat to pick up our belongings, we were told, ‘Get on.’ My mother pleaded, ‘I need to get my son!’ They told her there was no time. I had cut my foot. My mother was trying to stop my bleeding and comfort me, all the while sobbing. The coastline was like our [U.S.] southern border. The boat would put ashore and be towed back out to sea [because] no one wanted us. I was seasick, so they put me in a fish hold that smelled of diesel and fish, which made me sicker. We were at sea for six weeks, 50 people on a small boat. We reached a refugee camp, where we were united with my father and brothers. We were granted asylum in the United States. “
Tarnay’s young brother would also escape and be reunited with his family, but not until two-and-a-half years later.
“I asked my mother how she could have left her two-year-old son behind. She said, ‘You don’t think. You do what you have to do.’”
“I think about the immigrant children arriving alone at our southern border. Their parents love them. We have a common story.”
For related information visit SouthBayCares.org.
A town hall meeting presented by the Manhattan Beach Unified School District Inclusion Stand Up Committee will be held Friday May 7, via Zoom from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Panelist will discuss discrimination and kindness within the Manhattan Beach community, according to organizer Armaan Shivpuri, a Mira Costa junior. For details visit MB-Indivisible.org. ER