Stop Asian Hate Archives - Strategic Living

Seattle’s Police Chief Diaz (right) mingles with the community.

Last week I participated in Seattle’s Chinatown – International District’s National Night Out event. There was a good turnout, and lots of food. The Fire Department brought in trucks, and excited kids swarmed around them as hoses and ladders and other gear come out. The Police Department also had officers present, and Chief Diaz mingled with the crowd. I conducted a short interactive demo on some self-defense physical skills and using your voice. There were booths with info on recycling, public spaces cleanup, assistance for those affected by the COVID pandemic, and personal safety. The most popular booth by far was the personal safety one, they were giving out safety accessories. Flashlights, whistles, and alarms. These were so popular that people were allowed to choose only ONE device to take home. Most popular device? Personal alarm.

Chinatown - International District National Night Out Safety Booth

This safety booth was giving out flashlights, whistles, and personal alarms.

I already have a flashlight (in fact, I have multiple flashlights), and a couple of whistles, but not a personal alarm. So I picked one up to play with. Pretty easy to work, just pull the pin and voila! loudness. At least if you are right next to it. Not so much if you’re a few yards away. Down the block, not really. Its effectiveness is mainly on the person(s) right in arms’ length. You turn it off by re-inserting the pin, which you hopefully you would not have dropped. Or you can pop the battery. It’s plastic, probably not particularly durable, and if you don’t use it for a while you’ll want to check to make sure the battery’s not dead. I spent a few minutes working with it to see if I could operate it with one hand, that was a bit awkward.

Any time you consider carrying a personal safety accessory, please learn how to use it, and practice. Even something so simple as a personal alarm or a whistle can be surprisingly difficult to wrangle when you are under stress. Will you remember which end to pull on this alarm? How strongly do you have to blow to get sound from the whistle? Where’s the flashlight’s on switch? And sometimes, under duress, people even forget what they have in their hands.

At this Night Out event there was a definite emotional undercurrent. You probably have heard, and everyone at the gathering had this on the top of their minds, in the last year and a half Asians in the United States have experienced an increased number of street assaults and hate crimes. Many in the Asian communities are alarmed about not only these assaults, but also that there seems to be little concern from the greater Seattle community. One local activist, Jolene Jang, is organizing allies to be more effective in bringing not only attention but solutions to anti-Asian hate crime. Can you participate? Check out her Facebook group.

I’ve got my fall class schedule up, lots of new offerings for both the six-week course and single-session classes. Some of these classes include de-escalation and bystander intervention. Most people don’t help because they don’t quite know how, and you can get to practice some skills and get more comfortable with the idea of actively creating a safer city. Contact me if you want to know which classes will have more of this content.

As always, stay safe and live life.

Welcome to July! When I think of July, fireworks and BBQ are on the top of my brain. We celebrate July 4th, and the founding of America about 245 years ago. We celebrate independence and freedom. Today we live in unusual times. And we are confronted with competing visions of independence and freedom.

Independence and freedom are two of our most revered American values, our most celebrated virtues. And two that, in these uncertain time, seem to more and more divide us as a nation.

As an emPOWERment self-defense teacher, I hold these truths to be self-evident: That all people are equally human. That we all have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That we are entitled to a representative government to safeguard and enforce these rights. And we are entitled to organize and advocate for change when our elected officials fall short.

As an emPOWERment self-defense teacher, I very strongly believe that any “information” that encourages you to make someone else’s life smaller, based on their race/gender expression/ethnicity/sexual orientation/nationality/etc., is neither useful nor empowering to you, nor to anyone else.

As an emPOWERment self-defense teacher, I very strongly believe that everyone deserves safety, regardless of their political beliefs. But the harm that has been codified, institutionalized, and currently enforced upon broad swaths of our people, is not in keeping with our foundational values.

And, as an emPOWERment self-defense teacher, I say you do not have to relinquish your power. You do have power. Alice Walker has said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Keep in mind that nobody will give you power — you need to take it (I believe Frederick Douglass said something like that). (We can help you practice and hone many of these skills.)

Please continue contacting your elected officials, singularly or en masse, to ask them to use the power we entrusted to them to end these policies of purposefully traumatizing and harming our communities. Protest. Donate. Participate.

You may need to remind your fellow citizens too, on occasion, that you have the right to live in peace and dignity. Sad, but unusual times brings out the best in some people and the worst in others.

Independence isn’t a once-and-done deal, sealed with the signing of a piece of parchment. It wasn’t perfect then, it’s not perfect now, it probably never will be perfect. We are a work in progress, we are not absolved from working on progress. And we have a long way to go.

Stay safe, live life.

The final day in March, 2021, is another nice, sunny day in the glorious Emerald City. I love sunshine. Rain and darkness certainly have their essential restorative qualities, and inspire me to appreciate the contrasting clarity and brightness of daylight even more. And, on a more metaphorical level, yes of course it connects with self-defense, this IS a self-defense page, of course I’m going to talk about self-defense. To daylight something is to bring it to awareness, to attention. Usually that something is that which many people would rather ignore, like the elephant in the room.

This is coming up, again, in the wake of a slew of assaults committed against persons of Asian descent living in America. Yes, this America, land of the free and home of the brave. I’ve been reading that many of those targeted are reluctant to come forward, to report the assaults. To possibly bring further unwanted attention to themselves. There’s a hope that if nobody talks about the elephant, the elephant will go back to sleep in its corner (until the next time).

Of all the people in the metaphorical room, some may ignore the elephant because they’re unaware of the presence of the elephant because they personally are not impacted. Others because not only are they personally not affected, they are also choosing not to pay attention because it’s not important to them. And some because not only are they not personally impacted, they don’t think it’s a serious or even a real impact for anyone.

If a person not personally affected by the elephant can successfully ignore that elephant, they have some power (the word privilege can also used here) whether they want to acknowledge it or not. If they can define another person’s concerns as insignificant, well that’s more power. If a person can successfully silence those voicing concerns about that elephant, they have real power and privilege. elephant in the room

To ignore the elephant when you are profoundly impacted, isn’t that fear of someone else’s power. Fear of retaliation, of consequences for inconveniencing someone more privileged who doesn’t want to deal with your elephant. There are many situations where using one’s voice at that instant is the best tool, but others where timing is also important.

Seattle-based author and activist Ijeoma Oluo wrote this article about living in fear and living anyways, about silence not helping her. Even though the article is almost two years old, it reads as relevant today as it did then. She also talks about the love and support she’s received from her communities to get her through the hate and death threats.

A significant reason many others don’t speak up is they feel they do NOT have that kind of support. And the burden to speak up should not fall solely with the victim, especially as we know they could be opening themselves to further threats and danger. Because they are not the problem. The problem lies with those committing violence and as well as with people who enable them directly, and indirectly encourage conditions that promote violence.

And violence thrives in silence.

Those of us who see the elephant but are not directly impacted also need to speak up for what is right and provide support.

Not sure where to begin? Try one of these Bystander/Upstander Intervention Trainings.

STAY SAFE, LIVE LIFE

Do you feel dismayed but helpless, again, in the face of yet another senseless act of violence?

Like many other Americans, I was dismayed to hear of the murders last week (Tuesday, March 16, 2021) in Atlanta of 8 people, mostly women of Asian descent. Dismayed, but sadly not really surprised. I was again dismayed, and not really surprised, at the subsequent discourse, if these homicides really fall into the category of hate crime.

A hate crime is broadly and ofttimes vaguely described as a criminal act, with the addition of being motivated at least in part by the victims’ perceived race, religion, ethnicity, gender expression, national origin, etc. There are federal hate crime laws, as well as hate crime laws in 47 states. These would be added on to underlying criminal charges. First, though, they would need to be identified as hate crimes by law enforcement and prosecutors. You can read a bit more in this article, and why it’s application and enforcement became problematic.

We emPowerment self-defense teachers often talk about the “red flags,” about paying attention to a person’s actions. Back to Atlanta earlier this week. The murderer bought a gun that day. He then went to one spa and murdered people. And, rather than leaving and walking to the next doorway, to some other business, to continue his shooting spree, he got into his car and drove to the next target, another spa. And then to a third. These businesses were targeted. All spas, connected to Asian women. This looks pretty deliberate, and not like someone who is just “fed up” or “having a bad day,” as one law enforcement officer tried to explain the murderer’s actions. I’ve had bad days too, gotten “fed up” with circumstances — I bet you have too — and yet somehow I’ve managed to figure out how to get through those times without committing homicide (I bet you have too).

And it is past frustrating when those who have authority to wield power to name an action — “is it REALLY a hate crime?” — drag their feet on what seems to be obvious.

Which is a significant part of the issue. A few months ago I blogged (and FB Lived, and made a video) about Homeroom, a restaurant in Oakland that turned processing sexual harassment claims around. Rather than the waitstaff telling the manager that a customer was harassing them and the manager deciding if it was really harassment and what, if anything to do about it, the waitstaff themselves now determined the level of harassment and the manager then had a clear prescribed course of action. See below for links to the media.

When those who have been victimized have little to no say in defining their reality, in labeling what they lived (or not) through, they are disempowered. Invisible. Out of sight, out of mind? So that we more privileged people can get on with our lives without too much discomfort?

It may seem that quibbling over a label is a distraction from the real story, which is that 8 people were murdered in another senseless act of violence. Those labels do matter, they do contribute to whether or not we recognize our history of violence, and how much we acknowledge that systemic ignorance needs to be daylighted. We can’t change history, but we can learn from it so we can change the course of our future.

What can we do? Support our Asian friends and colleagues publicly; listen to them and work to imagine their perspective. Learn some bystander intervention skills. And let our public servants know that this misuse of power is not acceptable.

I can whole-heartedly recommend these sources for online bystander/upstander intervention training:

• Hollaback!: https://www.ihollaback.org/harassmenttraining/
• Center for Anti-Violence Education: https://www.caeny.org/upstander
• Defend Yourself: https://defendyourself.org/bystander-intervention/

Violence thrives in silence.

Speak up, and live life.

Media about Homeroom (the restaurant):

• Blog: https://www.strategicliving.org/creating-support-and-safer-spaces/
• FB Live: https://www.facebook.com/98483803840/videos/218376709673444
• Vimeo or YouTube: https://vimeo.com/487661680 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCwGDdXlEmo

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