Sunday Read: Hey Andrew Yang! Are we American enough yet? AAPI pitching in to counter coronavirus

New York Sikhs prepare meals for those who can't fend for themselves during the coronavirus crisis.

Yeah, Donald Trump's penchant for otherizing people has opened the door for bigots to unleash their heretofore pent-up racist beliefs, but that hasn't stopped AAPI groups helping their fellow Americans despite racist attacks from ignorant bigots.

Andrew Yang's Washington Post oped calling on Asian Americans to outdo their non-AAPI neighbors in volunteering, pitching in, and other good deeds so AAPI can prove we are Americans enough is still reverberating throughout Asian America.

Apparently, before Yang's so-called call to action aimed at Asian Americans, AAPI groups and individuals have already been doing their part doing the things that good Americans do. Here are just a few examples:

AAPI medical personnel in the front lines caring for the ill

First off, we know that AAPI medical personnel, despite the risk to themselves and their families, are in the front lines of caring for coronavirus victims as nurses, doctors, and medtechs. Several of these American heroes have lost their lives trying to help the afflicted.

Even though AAPI make up only 6% of the US population, almost 20% of the physicians, 9% of physician’s assistants and nearly 10% of nurses in the United States are of Asian descent.

Asian American researchers like Dr. David Ho are also leading the research in their quest to find a vaccine for the heretofore unknown virus.

Eun Kim and Shaohua Huang, both of whom are on the University of Pittsburgh medical school faculty are reportedly on the verge of nailing down a vaccine.

Some of the physician organizations have taken the initiative to help the New York-New Jersey hospitals running short of protective gear.

The Coalition of Asian-Americans in Private Practice, a New York group with more than 1,000 members, has raised close to $250,000 since January and expects to get 80,000 N95 masks to New York hospitals this month, reports the NY Times.

A New Jersey doctor, Dr. Peter Lee, went on WeChat to make an appeal for supplies. Within three days, the Millburn Short Hills Chinese Association, based about 20 miles away, saw his post and raised more than $50,000 and obtained 10,000 masks, gowns and other pieces of equipment from a Chinese company with a warehouse in Queens. 

AAPI individuals, organizations and religious groups who are not in the medical field are "pitching-in" and "volunteering" like many other Americans. 

Asian American chamber of commerce donate to Houston hospitals

The Asian American Chamber of Commerce donated today over $42,000 in medical supplies to the City of Houston following our urgent calls for personal protective equipment.

"We as a collective body, including Chinese-American, Korean-American, Vietnamese-American, Japanese-Americans, Filipino-Americans and the various other AAPI ethnicities, are in support of helping Houston through this challenging crisis and will stand by Mayor Sylvester Turner and the City of Houston in whatever the needs are," said Bin Yu, Asian Chamber Board Chair. "The City of Houston has been in support of our Chamber since our existence 30 years ago and we have built our campaign in rallying together where we titled it: 'Together, Houston is Stronger!'

Among the donations are 10,000 N95 masks, 40 gallons of sanitaizers, 825 isolations gowns, 270 goggles and 500 face shields.

Teen raising funds and PPE donations for medical staff

Harry Ding, an eighth-grader at Buist Academy downtown. has launched a drive in the Asian American community in Charleston, S.C. to collect hundreds of personal protective equipment for hospital workers, an effort that Ding hopes will help tear away at subconscious biases that may exist locally.

“We all have biases against others,” said the 14-year old. “I think this will help.”

Ding is part of a volunteer group of more than a dozen Charleston area residents of Asian descent who have collected more than 400 N95 masks, 300 surgical masks, and several goggles, medical gloves and bottles of alcohol, as well as $4,000.

The items were taken on March 25 to a warehouse operated by the Medical University of South Carolina, and the money will be used to purchase more hospital items that will be donated as well.

San Francisco Filipino restaurants team up to Feed the Frontline with 10,000 meals

A group of Filipino American restaurants in San Francisco have combined their resources to help feed the medical staffs of local hospitals drawing on the Filipino value of kapwa. As defined by the father of modern Filipino psychology, Virgilio Enriquez, kapwa means “shared identity,” “equality,” and “being with others.” To put it simply, kapwa is the obligation we have towards our fellow man

Filipinos Feed the Frontlines is a new fundraising initiative that aims to raise $100,000 to pay struggling Filipino restaurants to provide 10,000 free meals to local hospitals and vulnerable people in the SoMa community.

The nine businesses currently signed up to provide meals through Filipinos Feed the Frontlines include some of the most prominent names in the Bay Area Filipino food community: Nick’s on Grand, Señor Sisig, Lumpia Company, Sarap Shop, Mestiza and Little Skillet, FK Frozen Custard, Manila Bowl, SF Chickenbox/IVSF Catering, and the pop-up Ox and Tiger. 

As of publication time, the campaign has raised more than $12,000 since it launched over the weekend — it’s actively seeking both corporate sponsorships and small individual donations.

Houston restaurant donates meals to hospitals

Be More Pacific in the Heights, a Filipino restaurant, is doing its part to help those on the front lines in the fight against the coronavirus. It had beenopen for only three weeks before the coronavirus pandemic hit the Houston area. It is not focused on preparing and delivering meals to local medical staff.

The Filipino-style restaurant has only been open about three weeks but is focused on preparing and delivering meals to nurses and doctors in the Houston area.

“We’re trying to provide them the food they need," said General Manager Brian Caispe.

The restaurant has asked the public for more donations. They said they are willing to continue cooking as long as people are willing to contribute.

To donate, visit their website at www.bemorepacifickitchenandbar.com or call them at 832-582-5264.

Seattle restaurant offering free meals for anyone

The restaurant Musang opened three months ago but when the coronavirus hit Seattle, the Filipino restaurant shifted to take-out order only.

Shortly thereafter, chef-owner Melissa Miranda, turned the restaurant into a communitiy kitchen, preparing meals for people in need for free.

“We decided to do this based on the needs of the community. Currently most restaurants, if not all, are on takeout or closed. There’s about 350,000 employees that have lost work,” said chef/owner Melissa Miranda.

“So we wanted to make sure we fed them. All the schools are closed now and so there’s about 56,000 students just in the Seattle public schools that are without food so we wanted to make sure that they were being fed.”

On Musang’s Instagram account, Miranda asked for programs that serve families in need to contact the restaurant with meal requests. People also have the opportunity to donate via Venmo or Paypal to keep Musang’s community kitchen running — one meal at a time.

Sikhs open their kitchens

More recently, in New York, the Sikh Centre prepared and packed over 30,000 home-cooked meals for Americans in self-isolation. 

New York's Mayor's office approached the Sikh community to make the food packages that were then distributed to several federal agencies in the area. The food packages were are to be given to the elderly, challenged people, homeless and single parents looking after their kids who can’t go out.

United Sikhs, an NGO with chapters throughout the United States, is urging people from all walks of life to donate generously.

"Once we heard people were having a problem with food when they go shopping, they can't find food in the shopping centre, then we started reaching out to people in our personal capacity in the Bay Area (San Francisco)," ANI quoted, Dr Pritpal Singh, coordinator of the American Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee (west coast) as saying.

Sikhs in California have done the same for homeless shelters, the elderly and the homeless. 

Being Sikh is “not just about the turban and the facial hair or the prayers,” Gurvinder Singh, international humanitarian aid director for United Sikhs. “It’s also about community involvement, community engagement, community activism. That’s absolutely a requirement.”

WeChat to the rescue 

Xuerong Xia is a stay-at-home mom in the Chicago area. She joined WeChat just a few months ago in order to find ways to help the people in China deal with the coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China.

Before long, she turned her attention to helping local hospitals, coordinating efforts to raise funds and collect items -- some aid coming from China, to supply the local hospitals which were running short of personal protective gear.

Xia soon teamed up with John Li, who like her, began helping China but turned his attention to US needs. Through WeChat, Li estimates he’s received more than $30,000 on top of the tens of thousands of face masks and other medical equipment to give to Chicago-area medical facilities.

And there are the super rich giving back

• The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, managed by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, is donating to the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, which will help coordinate research efforts to identify new drugs and treatments for the illness. The Accelerator is already backed by $125 million in commitments from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, health foundation Wellcome, and Mastercard’s Impact Fund, according a March 10th press release.

• The foundations of business leaders including Jack Ma and Joe Tsai, co-founders of Alibaba, recently pledged to send one million surgical masks and one million N95 masks to New York state, reports the NY Times. In additin, Ma has donated $2 million to Columbia University for Dr. Ho's research into the coronavirus.

• The Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation and the Chinese government coordinated a shipment of 1,000 ventilators to Kennedy International Airport in New York.

• Li Lu, the chairman of Himalaya Capital Management, has also spearheaded major donations, and the Committee of 100, a Chinese-American leadership organization, has raised $1 million.

And the list goes on ...

AAPI across the United States are pitching in, volunteering, raising funds and other proactive things that "Americans" do.

• A group of Chinese-American professors at Rutgers University raised $12,000 and collected more than 4,000 masks to support a hospital in New Brunswick. 

• A church in Parsippany donated thousands of masks to hospitals and even to local gas stations, where attendants are still required to pump gas by law.

• Danbury Hospital in Connecticut is receiving more than 6,000 surgical masks thanks to $20,000 in donations from the Chinese community, reports News 12. The hospital has already received 5,000 masks and another 1,500 are scheduled to arrive today

• Elsewhere, 115 restaurant owners from the Chinese American community nationwide have raised $72,000-enough to purchase 20,000 surgical masks, according to Xinhuanet. The money is also being used to donate 300 N95 masks, 3,550 protective coveralls and 500 pairs of gloves to multiple hospitals in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, and another hospital in New Jersey.

• In Wisconsin, a ginseng grower has received 1,000 surgical masks and 400 N95 masks from China and has donated them to local hospitals and police departments.

• Xinhuanet reports the Long Island Chinese American Association has donated 37,000 surgical masks and nearly 3,500 personal protective masks to ten hospitals.

Plea to Andrew Yang

So, Andrew, I see you kind of explain what you really meant in your oped. It takes a little bit of the sting out of your original thesis, though it still hurts. But its a little too late, don't you think? To use a couple of American cliche's: "The cat is out of the bag." "The horse has left the stable." 

You said in Next Shark: "I realize that the op-ed fell short. I did not mean to suggest that we as Asian Americans needed to do anything more to prove that we are Americans. We’ve been here, we belong here and will continue to be part of the fabric of America."

That interview in Next Shark conducted by a former campaign staffer doesn't come close to the reach of the international readership of the Washington Post. Most people will have missed it.

So, Andrew, I hope you can see that AAPI folk, individually and collectively, are doing the good, old American thing because, even though some were born in Asia, they choose to live in this country and in their hearts, they are American. They pledge their loyalty to the US, stand for the "Star Spangled Banner," attend religious services, learn white America's  history that largely ignores AAPI, run for office, Asian American lawmakers introduce policies, entrepreneurs start businesses, volunteer, pitch-in -- you know, all the things Americans are supposed to do.

The problem is, Andrew, despite all this pitching-in and volunteering and being American, the hate acts against Asian Americans seem to be growing more frequent and more violent.

Please, Andrew, can you write another oped to the racists and bigots who continue to harass, bully and attack Asian Americans and explain to them what they need to do in order to be good Americans?