WASHINGTON (AP) — For a century, the League of Women Voters in Florida formed bonds with marginalized residents by helping them register to vote — and, in recent years, those efforts have extended to the growing Asian American and Asian immigrant communities.

But a state law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in May would have forced the group to alter its strategy.

The legislation would have imposed a $50,000 fine on third-party voter registration organizations if the staff or volunteers who handle or collect the forms have been convicted of a felony or are not U.S. citizens.

A federal judge blocked the provision this week. But its passage reflects the effort by DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate, and other GOP leaders to crack down on access to the ballot. Florida is one of at least six states, including Georgia and Texas, where Republicans have enacted voting rules since 2021 that created or boosted criminal penalties and fines for individuals and groups that assist voters. Several of those laws are also facing legal challenges.

In the meantime, voting rights advocates are being forced to quickly adapt to the changing environment. Before the ruling in Florida, for instance, the League of Women Voters started using online links and QR codes for outreach. It removed the personal connection between its workers and communities and replaced it with digital tools that are likely to become a technological barrier.

“If there’s not access, in terms of language, we can’t get to as many people, which particularly affects AAPI voters,” Executive Director Leah Nash said, referring to the state’s Asian American and Pacific Island population, which has grown rapidly and where more than 30% of adults have limited English proficiency. “If we just give someone our website or QR code to go register, we don’t know for sure if they’re doing it and we like to get as many people registered to vote as possible.”

In states where penalties are getting tougher, the developments have sowed fear and confusion among groups that provide translators, voter registration help and assistance with mail-in balloting — roles that voting rights advocates say are vital for Asian communities in particular.

In a number of states, language barriers already hamper access to the ballot for a population that has been growing rapidly. Asian, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander populations grew 35% between 2010 and 2020, according to Census data. The new laws in mostly Republican-led states are seen by many voting groups as another form of voter suppression.

“It’s specifically targeting limited English proficiency voters, and that includes AAPI voters,” said Meredyth Yoon, litigation director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Atlanta.

Yoon added that record turnout for the 2020 elections in Georgia influenced the Republican-dominated legislature to pass sweeping voter restrictions: “It’s not a coincidence,” she said.

In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill in June that raises the penalty for illegal voting to a felony, upping it from a misdemeanor charge that was part of a sweeping elections law passed two years earlier.

Alice Yi, who is Chinese American, used to help translate in Austin, Texas, but said the new law isn’t clear about whether good faith mistakes will be criminalized and worries that she could get into trouble by offering assistance.

Yi recalls being approached during a 2022 primary election by a man who was Vietnamese American and asked for help because he hadn’t voted before and didn’t speak English. She said she was immediately worried she could face consequences if she helped him.

“This is the fear I’m facing,” she said.

Now, she said, she will help her father vote, but no one else.

But voting rights supporters like Ashley Cheng — also in Austin — remain committed to reaching Asian voters, despite the threat of jail time.

Cheng, the founding president of Asian Texans for Justice, recalls discovering her mother was not listed in the voter rolls when she tried to help her vote in 2018. They never found out why she wasn’t properly registered. Advocates say this highlights flaws in the system and illustrates how volunteers are essential to overcoming them.

The group’s own research has found that roughly two-thirds of Asian voters in Texas were highly motivated to vote in the 2022 midterm elections. Cheng said that desire amplified her enthusiasm to help the community get its votes counted.

“It’s really easy to feel like, ‘Oh, I would love to just like not try anymore,’” she said. “But, I think about people like my mom and so many others in the Asian diaspora who live in Texas who have that experience of wanting to vote but not being able to, for whatever reason, are not feeling like it’s accessible.”

For instance, some 34% of Asian American adults in Texas have limited English proficiency, according to 2022 data from Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIA Vote), a nonpartisan Asian American and Pacific Islander advocacy group.

Farha Ahmed, an attorney in Texas, said the increased liability in helping these marginalized communities access the ballot box forced her to decide against continuing as an election judge, a position that administers voting procedures and settles disputes concerning election laws.

“There’s not a lot of resources and there’s not a lot of protection,” said Ahmed, who lives in Sugarland, just outside Houston. “Election judges want to help make it easy for people to vote, but with these new laws in place, they’re very unsure of where is their liability when they’re really just trying to do their best to help.”

Before Florida and Texas, Georgia lawmakers overhauled that state’s election laws.

A section of Georgia’s 2021 election bill made it a misdemeanor to offer a voter any money or gifts at polling places, a provision that included passing out water and snacks for those waiting in lines. Attempts to get a court to toss out the ban on snacks and water have so far been unsuccessful.

James Woo, the communications director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, said he won’t even get his parents a drink of water while helping them with their ballots.

“It’s simple things like that, which would have been like a conversation starter or just like helping them throughout the process, might be viewed as like something illegal I’m doing,” he said.

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Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are strongly underrepresented among elected officials at all levels in California, a statewide report has determined.

API Coalition, a nonprofit led by Contra Costa Community College District Governing Board member Andy Li, published a roster recently of the names of all Asian American elected officials in California who held office as of mid-May.

According to the report, there are about 20,000 elected positions across the state, but only about a little more than 500 current officeholders are people of Asian descent—less than 3%. California’s Asian American and Pacific Islander population is about 16% of the total state population, according to the latest Census data, more than five times the percentage of elected officials.

“The findings were startling, revealing a significant dearth of representation,” Li said. “We need to raise awareness about the pressing need to diversify our governing bodies.”

Of the 52 members of the House of Representatives in California’s congressional delegation, seven are Asian Americans: Doris Matsui, Judy Chu, Mark Takano, Michelle Steel, Ro Khanna, Ted Lieu and Young Kim. At the statewide level, only two Asian Americans currently hold office, State Treasurer Fiona Ma and Attorney General Rob Bonta.

In San Francisco, City Attorney David Chiu, Public Defender Mano Raju and Supervisors Connie Chan and Ahsha Safaí made it to the list. However, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, the first Asian American sheriff in California, is missing from the roster.

API Coalition acknowledged that some Asian American and Pacific Islander politicos may not be included in its count, but the total number of API elected officials in California is unlikely to exceed 550. Even that figure is less than 3% of the total number of officeholders.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, Fremont Mayor Lily Mei and Bakersfield Mayor Karen Goh are among the Asian American mayors of the state’s major cities.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Asian Americans, veterans and civilians in the U.S. and the Philippines are campaigning to name a Navy warship for a Filipino sailor who bravely rescued two crew members when their ship caught fire more than a century ago, earning him a prestigious and rare Medal of Honor.

Supporters say naming a ship for Telesforo Trinidad would honor not just the only Asian American in the U.S. Navy granted the nation’s highest award for valor, but the tens of thousands of Filipinos and Americans of Filipino descent who have served in the U.S. Navy since 1901, when the Philippines was a United States territory.

“I don’t believe it’s a long shot at all; it may be a long timeline, but we’re hoping it’s not,” said retired Navy Capt. Ron Ravelo and chair of the campaign. “We’re going to be making Navy ships into the foreseeable future, and there’s no reason one of those can’t bear the name of Telesforo Trinidad.”

Trinidad, who died in 1968 at age 77, was so eager to join the U.S. Navy that he stowed away on a lifeboat from his home island of Panay to the main island to enlist, said grandson Rene Trinidad. In 1915, while on patrol on the USS San Diego, he risked his life and suffered burns to rescue two crewmates when boilers exploded, killing nine. He received the medal that year, at a time when the honor could be awarded for noncombat valor.

Rene Trinidad, a real estate agent in Southern California, recalls his grandfather was a man of few words.

“He let his actions speak for himself,” he said, “and I suppose that’s why he did what he did.”

The campaign has grassroots enthusiasm, and support from Democratic Congress members who sent a letter last month to Thomas Harker, acting secretary of the Navy.

Traditionally, different types of ships have different naming conventions, but there are exceptions, said Samuel J. Cox, retired rear admiral and director of the Naval History and Heritage Command, which suggests names and has previously submitted Trinidad’s for consideration. The secretary of the Navy has final authority and discretion to name and rename ships, he said.

Some memorialize states, U.S. cities, Navy heroes or distinguished Americans. The number of Navy ships receiving names varies widely by year but averages roughly to about eight, of which three or four are named for people, Cox said.

“There simply are far too many heroes compared to the number of ships to be named,” he said.

Norman Polmar, author and naval analyst, agrees.

“And I hate to say this, I’m getting a little pain when I say this: Increasingly it becomes political — what party you’re in and who’s in the White House, and occasionally the White House gets involved,” Polmar said.

Former U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus drew controversy after naming naval ships for former U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords; the late gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk of San Francisco; and the late farmworker activist Cesar Chavez. The honoring of Giffords broke more modern traditions that the person be dead or old.

Critics also said there were plenty of heroic service members to choose from. Mabus said his picks also demonstrated heroism.

In January 2020, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly named a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier after Doris “Dorie” Miller, an African American enlisted sailor who received the Navy Cross for his actions during Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

The naming did not sit well with critics who say Miller deserves to have a ship named after him, but not an elite aircraft carrier bearing the names of presidents. There’s also ongoing debate over ships named for the Civil War Confederacy.

Cecilia Gaerlan, Trinidad campaign board member, said they would like a Navy surface combatant, such as a destroyer or frigate, named for the fireman second class. The naming would be a symbol of the Navy’s commitment to “diversity, equality and inclusion during this time of national racial tensions and unwarranted violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs of California, in a May letter to Harker signed by 10 others.

There are other Navy vessels named for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, including the USS Daniel Inouye, a destroyer. The former U.S. senator received the Medal of Honor as part of the celebrated 442nd Infantry Regiment, made up of Americans of Japanese descent whose families were incarcerated in camps during World War II.

There was a U.S. Navy a ship named for a Filipino person, but Gaerlan says the USS Rizal, a destroyer in service from 1919 to 1931, was donated by the Philippine Legislature and honors José Rizal, a national hero who never served in the military.

More than two dozen Asian and Pacific Americans have been awarded the Medal of Honor since its creation during the Civil War, mostly in the U.S. Army, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. There are roughly 3,500 recipients.

Telesforo Trinidad, born in 1890, enlisted in 1910 in the Insular Force established by then-President William McKinley and served in both world wars. More than 250,000 Filipino soldiers served in World War II, and thousands died during the brutal 1942 Bataan Death March in the Philippines.

Rene Trinidad, 65, said it goes against his cultural upbringing to call attention to his grandfather’s heroism, but his late father wanted the recognition for his father, who overcame hardship, merited a medal and worked hard to provide for his family. Two sons followed him into the U.S. Navy.

“The bottom line is that Filipinos be recognized for their contribution to the United States, and that every Filipino should be proud of that as well,” he said.

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Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American Studies, was gravely concerned as he watched the emergence of the novel coronavirus in China last year.

“I knew from the past that Asian Americans would be blamed for the disease and then be met with interpersonal violence and racist policies,” Jeung said in a recent Center for Health Journalism Covering Coronavirus webinar.

As the pandemic took hold in March 2020, he co-founded Stop AAPI Hate, which tracks self-reported COVID-19-related hate incidents, shares resources and advocates for civil rights protections. As of the end of February, they had received about 3,800 incident reports. That number surged after the Atlanta shootings in March.

“The hate and anger directed toward Asians was appalling,” said Jeung, who teaches at San Francisco State University.

Jeung was joined by Linda Yoon, a therapist who focuses on Asian mental health, and Los Angeles Times journalist Anh Do to discuss the wave of hostilities and their mental health impact, as well as how the media can cover these issues with sensitivity and nuance.   

Traumatic impacts

Stop AAPI Hate documents hate incidents in categories such as civil rights violations, workplace mistreatment, online harassment, physical violence and microaggressions, the largest category of reports which includes verbal harassment.

While Jeung calls microaggressions a “small t” trauma, they accumulate over time and can ultimately have the same impact as “big T” traumas such as war and poverty, he said. The experience of racial trauma can lead to elevated anxiety, depression, and hypervigilance.

“Clearly what has happened has deeply impacted Asian Americans’ mental health,” he said.

The current wave of anti-Asian racism is based on a long history of stereotyping Asian Americans as outside threats and perpetual foreigners, he said. That’s why many of the verbal threats manifest as variations on “Go back to China.” And, when diseases come from Asia, Asian Americans are framed as a source of disease.

As the country emerges from the pandemic, there are more opportunities for attacks, as people of different backgrounds increasingly interact in public again. For Asian Americans, the fear of racist attacks often overpowers the threat of the virus itself, he said.

“We can cover ourselves with a mask to protect ourselves against COVID-19, but we can’t protect ourselves from some random stranger coming up to push us or attack our grandparents,” Jeung said.

Seeking mental health services

Despite these high levels of distress, Asian Americans are the least likely group in the United States to receive mental health services, said Yoon, the founder of Yellow Chair Collective, a multicultural psychotherapy practice which strives to provide culturally competent care.

The Collective, whose clients are about 80% Asian American, received 312 new Asian American client inquiries from January to April this year. About half of those inquiries came from people seeking therapy for the first time, and the majority specifically mentioned racial trauma.

Yoon’s clients have described not feeling safe in public. Many are rehearsing safety plans in case they’re attacked, and some are covering their faces to hide their identity. Many are experiencing loneliness, anxiety, depression, and anger. Too often, their struggles are invisible to friends, family, and colleagues. For some immigrant clients, the current traumas trigger past recollections of war, genocide, and displacement in their former countries.

It’s challenging for first generation immigrants and older Asian Americans to access mental health services since they often lack an understanding of services and face cultural stigmas, Yoon said. Better research and funding for Asian mental health programs as well as community outreach is important in addressing the collective traumas, she added.

Reporting the story

For reporters covering these stories, Yoon advised first addressing your own personal biases. Also, educate yourself on the stereotypes of Asian Americans and the impact of those perceptions on the community. It’s also important to understand the long history of Asian racism.

When you’re interviewing people, be accurate in reporting your source’s ethnicity, cultural background, and full names. While data is helpful, be aware that experiences may be underreported because of shame as well as language and cultural barriers.

Avoid generalizing: One person’s perspective doesn’t reflect the whole community, Yoon said. At the same time, sharing individual stories can create broader understanding and awareness. 

Anh Do, who covers Asian American issues as a metro reporter for the Los Angeles Times, worked from home for three months before heading back to the streets to unearth first-person stories.

She found people who had long struggled in silence, no longer willing to shoulder that burden. Increasingly, they were reporting incidents, creating safety plans for loved ones, and making sure their phones were ready to record. In the Bay Area, Do met volunteer safety patrols who were getting involved for the first time.

“Many had not been involved in grassroots activities before, but they couldn’t sit alone anymore, they said,” she said.

In the beginning, it took a lot of patience to encourage sources to speak on the record. Now Do frequently receives emails from ordinary folks saying they want to talk about their experience. In her sourcing, Do is careful to look for a wide swath of Asian Americans to interview, reaching beyond the more visible Chinese, Japanese and Korean communities to smaller populations such as Cambodians.

Do encouraged journalists to engage in more video coverage of people who are coming forward. She also recommends journalists investigate what’s happening as children return to school, saying, “the potential for bullying, stereotyping, violence is exponential.”

For Jeung, reading about so much hate on a regular basis has been difficult. He thinks a lot about what healing looks like, and how to stop the cycle of violence. There is some cause for optimism.

“I am heartened to see Asian Americans standing up,” he said. “And that does give me so much encouragement.”

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My assistant that night, a young male surgeon-in-training, and I had been called to a hospital a hundred miles from ours to help procure organs from a patient declared brain dead. Standing with my assistant, our hands freshly scrubbed, we were ready to be gowned and gloved for the operation.

The nurse gathered the first sterile gown in his arms. But instead of walking over to begin dressing me, the surgeon in charge, he walked over to my assistant and draped the material over his shoulders. I saw my young colleague flush under his mask, trying to shake off the gown and motion to me.

“Excuse me,” I said to the nurse, “If you want to get this operation started, you’ll need to help me first.”

The man froze, a limp sterile glove held in mid-air. He looked at me, then my male assistant, who nodded in confirmation of what I had just said.

“I’m so sorry,” the nurse stammered, as he rushed to get another gown for me. “It’s just that you don’t look like the surgeon.”

I am an Asian American woman, and this was not the only professional incident where I was assumed to be the subordinate, not the person in charge.

Up until very recently, I let incidents like this slip, believing that medicine was a privileged profession, free of the structural racism that plagued other sectors of society. I had seen the studies showing that Asian medical students and doctors had become so numerous they were in effect regarded as white. And I accepted this idea — until now.

It was the indifferent reactions to assaults against Asian Americans in recent months — and even to the targeted shootings of six Asian women in Atlanta — that made me recognize a similar indifference to bias in my profession.

In medicine, anti-Asian racism has been hidden under the test scores, graduation statistics and double-speak about diversity. Over the last half century, large numbers of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have sought to enter the medical profession, guided by the belief that more scientific pursuits would be less vulnerable to the subjective whims of prejudice.

By the early 2000s, Asian Americans, the great majority under 45, made up roughly 6% of the nation’s physicians. With approximately 4% of the population reporting as Asian in the 2000 census, the proportion of Asian-American and Pacific Islander physicians to the general population — the “demographic representation” — was higher than for other minority groups. Asian Americans in the physician pipeline also increased, making up more than 20% of students in American medical schools in 2016.

As hospitals and medical schools began recognizing the importance of having a diverse physician workforce, Asian Americans were soon labeled with the gaslighting double-negative — a “non-underrepresented minority” — and effectively shut out of diversity-centered efforts.

A 2001 report from the National Academy of Medicine, for example, rightly focused on the need to increase diversity in the health professions, but it was also filled with awkward attempts to bypass the issue of race for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. In some parts, the report assumed that all Asians were the same and asserted that Asian applicants in the physician pipeline could hinder other applicants of color — making no mention of the diversity of Asian Americans or that segments of the community, like Laotians and Cambodians, remain significantly underrepresented in medicine.

This view makes addressing discrimination in medicine extremely difficult. What little research that has been done reveals that Asian and Pacific Islander physicians face obstacles as challenging as those that other physicians of color must overcome.

After medical school, the path toward leadership positions for Asian Americans is almost completely blocked. In academic medical centers, for instance, Asian American doctors are underrepresented at every rank among clinical and science faculty, with the percentages decreasing as prestige and pay ascend.

It is very hard to find the number of Asian American medical school deans and department heads because official surveys fold them in with whites. Data from the Assn. of American Medical Schools shows that “non-underrepresented minorities” have made up around 90% to 94% of medical school deans since 1991. But when researchers drilled down for the 12 years ending in 2008, they found that not one dean was Asian.

Outside academia, Asians fare poorly as a percentage in leadership positions. Fewer than 1% of hospital chief executives are Asian American, while close to 7% identify as African American, Latino or Native Americans — which is also a terribly low percentage.

Asian American and Pacific Islander physicians regularly encounter race-based discrimination in the workplace, including outright harassment. Nearly half of all Asian American doctors have reported experiencing “substantial” discrimination in their workplace, with close to a quarter changing their jobs and significant numbers contemplating leaving medicine altogether.

In one study based at three prestigious urban medical centers, every single Asian-American physician-in-training reported being asked by patients at least once during the previous year about their ethnic origins. All but one of those Asian American doctors had been confused with a team member of the same race or ethnicity, and every one of the women recounted being assumed to be a non-physician.

Structural anti-Asian racism has long existed in the medical profession and equating the experience of Asian American and Pacific Islander physicians to that of white doctors willfully ignores the profound impact of race. That false equivalency must be abandoned if we are ever to achieve an inclusive health system that truly cares for all, patients and providers.

Pauline W. Chen is a surgeon and author of “Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality.”

Dr. Pauline W. Chen • Contributor

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