Monterey Park & Half Moon Bay: One week
January 29, 2023 8:43 AM Subscribe
LATimes has many news articles about what happened at Monterey Park: honoring the victims' lives, how the shooter's motives remain a mystery, whether domestic violence played a part, the deafening silence of Californian Republican politicians, and how to continue to dance and rebuild after a tragedy.
In Half Moon Bay, the shooter admits to his rage being sparked over a $100 repair bill, long hours, and being bullied at his place of employment. LATimes remembers the victims of Half Moon Bay.
It took 5 hours for police to warn the public that the Monterey Park shooter was still at large. SWAT teams were relieved of duty minutes before it happened.
President Biden commended Brandon Tsay, who disarmed the shooter at a second site, for being a hero. How older Asian Americans found community in ballroom dancing, and they will keep dancing.
The Half Moon Bay shooting puts a spotlight on the terrible working conditions of the farmworkers, who were living in shipping containers , making $9 an hour. CA State Senator Scott Weiner talks about how anti-housing measures leads to lack of farmworker housing.
Local Bay Area journalist Janelle Wang was able to interview him in person in his language, Mandarin, providing additional information on his state of mind. He turned himself in.
Emily Witt on processing the tragedy in Monterey Park.
A Terrifying Sign of Assimilation: Jeff Yang reflects on what it means for these shooters to be Asian, in America, isolated, and having easy access to guns.
Jay Caspian Kang also reflects on who owns a tragedy, and why the focus on race is inevitable but also not the whole story.
Eda Yu on the Monterey Park she remembers.
Vetted GoFundMes for Half Moon Bay victims and Monterey Park victims.
It took 5 hours for police to warn the public that the Monterey Park shooter was still at large. SWAT teams were relieved of duty minutes before it happened.
President Biden commended Brandon Tsay, who disarmed the shooter at a second site, for being a hero. How older Asian Americans found community in ballroom dancing, and they will keep dancing.
The Half Moon Bay shooting puts a spotlight on the terrible working conditions of the farmworkers, who were living in shipping containers , making $9 an hour. CA State Senator Scott Weiner talks about how anti-housing measures leads to lack of farmworker housing.
Local Bay Area journalist Janelle Wang was able to interview him in person in his language, Mandarin, providing additional information on his state of mind. He turned himself in.
Emily Witt on processing the tragedy in Monterey Park.
A Terrifying Sign of Assimilation: Jeff Yang reflects on what it means for these shooters to be Asian, in America, isolated, and having easy access to guns.
Jay Caspian Kang also reflects on who owns a tragedy, and why the focus on race is inevitable but also not the whole story.
Eda Yu on the Monterey Park she remembers.
Vetted GoFundMes for Half Moon Bay victims and Monterey Park victims.
I realized that a lot of places here fly flags at half mast after a shooting.... Kinda seems to lose a little bit of meaning when 1, it's constantly lowered, and 2, I know the building is owed by someone with a Gasden machine gun flag
posted by Jacen at 9:47 AM on January 29, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by Jacen at 9:47 AM on January 29, 2023 [10 favorites]
For me, Monterey Park is that mall with Daiso Japan, and then you go downstairs to the Buddhist Chinese all you can eat vegan fake meat restaurant. You just keep ordering and they keep bringing it. One table will be monks. Another, all non-Asian colleagues out for lunch during work. Also, delish. And after you've stuffed yourself, you go back upstairs and get that shave ice that's like an ice core sample carved w a saw? And they pour condensed milk on top. I love Monterey Park and it's people. I am so sad.
posted by atomicstone at 9:56 AM on January 29, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by atomicstone at 9:56 AM on January 29, 2023 [9 favorites]
I thought the link on domestic violence in the AAPI community was well done. The school district thing is something that I rarely see mentioned. There are absolutely mothers who would not leave an abuser if it meant risking the kids losing their school district. I know all the jokes and stereotypes about Asian parents, Asian kids and school, but I think it's just hard for people to understand how deeply education and specifically educational success/excellence/opportunity is in the cultural DNA. Leaving a good school district just because of domestic violence would be seen by many as a moral failure of a weak mother. I don't have any data to back this up, but if anything I'd suspect this is even stronger for the type of Asian that immigrates to the US.
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 10:08 AM on January 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 10:08 AM on January 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
I was in my senior year of high school when Columbine happened. Since then, it has been an interminable cycle of violence, grief, and stasis as the bodies pile up and any miniscule developments on gun control, get dwarfed by other states' laxer laws and the Supreme Court hell-bent on overturning established laws. I'll be honest, it all starts to feel a futile after a while. Maybe we can make things different. I don't know how.
Anyway, there was a lot of other ground I wanted to cover, but I ran out of time. I will be back later.
posted by toastyk at 11:25 AM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Anyway, there was a lot of other ground I wanted to cover, but I ran out of time. I will be back later.
posted by toastyk at 11:25 AM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
I grew up in a physically and emotionally abusive Chinese-American household. this was enabled because the predominantly white community around us never welcomed us. my parents were able to have a very private, classically toxic social network of themselves, far-removed family and co-workers, and thus a home where they could do whatever they wanted. they never had conversations with other parents about their form of discipline and punishment and even if they did so many of these white parents chalked up the abuse to a cultural difference
it's also true that education plays an important part in the US immigrant population because
1) the vast majority of Asian immigrants to the US have high educational attainment, something that occurs specifically because
2) our white-supremacist-at-heart work visa schemes are set to specifically filter out immigrants with 'unexceptional labor talents' and whose labor doesn't specifically benefit the corporate tech lobbies, and
3) the immigrants who do come are also a pretty self-selected group who believe in American pro-capitalist propaganda about meritocracy
in the cases of mass shooters, you see details about 'social isolation', how they were 'quiet' and seemed 'nice.' those were my parents, too, the ones who would come home and kick the shit out of me if they had a bad day with the excuse that I'd gotten less than an A on a test that they had never asked about before they saw the red ink at the top of the page
while I think a lot of people find these 'Asian' mass shooters surprising, I think that's only because of their limited exposure to communities that aren't their own - exposure in the form of actually being friends, gossiping, talking with folks unlike them, who might make them uncomfortable, beyond just sampling the local immigrant cuisine and basing their entire characterization and understanding of that community off of those facile understanding
the social isolation and abuse felt by these shooters are rooted in white supremacy in a different way than the white supremacist ideologies of other shooters. the facilitation of mass violence is definitely abetted by 2nd Amendment traditionalists but it's not as if this kind of suffering would stop occurring with better gun regulation
Half Moon Bay, too, I think is a kind of other world to most observers - a world of abused workers, even the documented ones. the Chinese restaurant I grew up in and around would sponsor so many workers, put them in mediocre housing, pay them shit wages, and force them to be dependent on their under-the-table pay model. meanwhile, the owner this year talked about how he decided to purchase brand-new Teslas for each of his two kids and his niece and nephew
the Thai restaurant I worked for in college had sponsored the visas of Buddhists monks who were kept isolated in a rural country home in the Midwest - the one time I went there to pick up produce I could see them tending to the farm the owner had set up for them, the wages and legality of that situation murky in the same way that it was the restaurant of my childhood
there's a streak of ugly, deeply rooted inequality facilitated by white supremacist ignorance that exists in this society, a reality which most people gladly ignore in their day-to-day - buried truths for a constructed reality where everybody is happy and nothing hurts
these realities exist alongside the one where your waiter happily carts out a dim sum cart full of fried taro cakes and siu mai - taro picked by an unknown worker, driven by an assuredly well-respected and paid driver, prepped by a grinning, happy line cook whose labor isn't maximally exploited under a capitalist system, served to you by a charismatic waiter whose excessive emotional labor dedicated to your comfort has nothing to do with the tip you'll give them, the one that'll determine whether or not they have enough money to make rent this month, their mental health definitely perfectly fine and not always eroding under constant strain and pressure leading to cases of violence in the toxically masculine and something else in just about everyone else
it's only when the tragedy is widespread and noticeable that people pay attention, that the farms are inspected for labor violations that have been going on, undoubtedly, for years, and that people begin coming out of the woodwork to say how unhappy this all truly makes them, how it affects them personally to hear about this reality existing alongside their nicer one where their restaurants and their city councils are filled with upstanding respectable capitalists and politicians who they never need to call, to check in on, to push back on their policies of exploitation and gentrification
posted by paimapi at 12:12 PM on January 29, 2023 [58 favorites]
it's also true that education plays an important part in the US immigrant population because
1) the vast majority of Asian immigrants to the US have high educational attainment, something that occurs specifically because
2) our white-supremacist-at-heart work visa schemes are set to specifically filter out immigrants with 'unexceptional labor talents' and whose labor doesn't specifically benefit the corporate tech lobbies, and
3) the immigrants who do come are also a pretty self-selected group who believe in American pro-capitalist propaganda about meritocracy
in the cases of mass shooters, you see details about 'social isolation', how they were 'quiet' and seemed 'nice.' those were my parents, too, the ones who would come home and kick the shit out of me if they had a bad day with the excuse that I'd gotten less than an A on a test that they had never asked about before they saw the red ink at the top of the page
while I think a lot of people find these 'Asian' mass shooters surprising, I think that's only because of their limited exposure to communities that aren't their own - exposure in the form of actually being friends, gossiping, talking with folks unlike them, who might make them uncomfortable, beyond just sampling the local immigrant cuisine and basing their entire characterization and understanding of that community off of those facile understanding
the social isolation and abuse felt by these shooters are rooted in white supremacy in a different way than the white supremacist ideologies of other shooters. the facilitation of mass violence is definitely abetted by 2nd Amendment traditionalists but it's not as if this kind of suffering would stop occurring with better gun regulation
Half Moon Bay, too, I think is a kind of other world to most observers - a world of abused workers, even the documented ones. the Chinese restaurant I grew up in and around would sponsor so many workers, put them in mediocre housing, pay them shit wages, and force them to be dependent on their under-the-table pay model. meanwhile, the owner this year talked about how he decided to purchase brand-new Teslas for each of his two kids and his niece and nephew
the Thai restaurant I worked for in college had sponsored the visas of Buddhists monks who were kept isolated in a rural country home in the Midwest - the one time I went there to pick up produce I could see them tending to the farm the owner had set up for them, the wages and legality of that situation murky in the same way that it was the restaurant of my childhood
there's a streak of ugly, deeply rooted inequality facilitated by white supremacist ignorance that exists in this society, a reality which most people gladly ignore in their day-to-day - buried truths for a constructed reality where everybody is happy and nothing hurts
these realities exist alongside the one where your waiter happily carts out a dim sum cart full of fried taro cakes and siu mai - taro picked by an unknown worker, driven by an assuredly well-respected and paid driver, prepped by a grinning, happy line cook whose labor isn't maximally exploited under a capitalist system, served to you by a charismatic waiter whose excessive emotional labor dedicated to your comfort has nothing to do with the tip you'll give them, the one that'll determine whether or not they have enough money to make rent this month, their mental health definitely perfectly fine and not always eroding under constant strain and pressure leading to cases of violence in the toxically masculine and something else in just about everyone else
it's only when the tragedy is widespread and noticeable that people pay attention, that the farms are inspected for labor violations that have been going on, undoubtedly, for years, and that people begin coming out of the woodwork to say how unhappy this all truly makes them, how it affects them personally to hear about this reality existing alongside their nicer one where their restaurants and their city councils are filled with upstanding respectable capitalists and politicians who they never need to call, to check in on, to push back on their policies of exploitation and gentrification
posted by paimapi at 12:12 PM on January 29, 2023 [58 favorites]
I'm wondering if Senator Weiner is calling for any form of socialized/public housing programs specifically for immigrant laborers or if he's just using this tragedy to benefit his developer constituency.
posted by flamk at 1:40 PM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by flamk at 1:40 PM on January 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
My little office is in MP (but a few minutes away, not in the main commercial district). This was so sad.
Both MP and the "city" I reside in out in the County have a similar dilemma (short of more radical choices that, whatever we might think here, are not going to be adopted) -- have one of these clownish local PDs in thrall to local money while they tool around in their surplussed MRAPs, or have the motherfucking LA Sheriffs and their less locally-sensitive fascism and criminal conspiracies. (Maybe MP could contract LAPD, as it borders. Remember the Ramparts scandal? Woo.)
It's not good.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:15 PM on January 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Both MP and the "city" I reside in out in the County have a similar dilemma (short of more radical choices that, whatever we might think here, are not going to be adopted) -- have one of these clownish local PDs in thrall to local money while they tool around in their surplussed MRAPs, or have the motherfucking LA Sheriffs and their less locally-sensitive fascism and criminal conspiracies. (Maybe MP could contract LAPD, as it borders. Remember the Ramparts scandal? Woo.)
It's not good.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:15 PM on January 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
At 72 the MP shooter would have been in the right demographic for military service in the South Vietnamese military if he was there at that time.
Some members of South Vietnam's forces did make it to the US after the war. I spent the year after dropping out of graduate school as a tutor in an EEOC sponsored program, and one of my students had been a Colonel in the South Vietnamese Army.
He was breath-takingly intelligent (how he compared to his US colleagues would have been interesting to know, but the preeminence of Oliver North suggests that other criteria for preferment were in play in the US at that time), as well as voluble (in his perfect English), interesting, and charming.
His study regime for the stat class he was taking for some kind of business degree was to attend class and take copious notes as he was recording the lectures, and then go home and transcribe the lecture from his recording to be sure that he understood it completely on a word by word basis. I doubt there was a student less in need of tutoring in the history of that program.
He wanted to be friends and I wanted that too, but when he invited me to dinner at his family's home, I turned him down because I had protested, marched, gone on strike and written letters against the war, and I was afraid he would be offended and feel betrayed that I had accepted his friendship if that ever came out, and I didn’t know how I would or should react if it turned out he had actively participated in one or more of many atrocities committed in that war, even though it was clear to me the US bore primary responsibility for them all.
I still have great regret and very mixed feelings about all that.
posted by jamjam at 3:14 PM on January 29, 2023 [8 favorites]
Some members of South Vietnam's forces did make it to the US after the war. I spent the year after dropping out of graduate school as a tutor in an EEOC sponsored program, and one of my students had been a Colonel in the South Vietnamese Army.
He was breath-takingly intelligent (how he compared to his US colleagues would have been interesting to know, but the preeminence of Oliver North suggests that other criteria for preferment were in play in the US at that time), as well as voluble (in his perfect English), interesting, and charming.
His study regime for the stat class he was taking for some kind of business degree was to attend class and take copious notes as he was recording the lectures, and then go home and transcribe the lecture from his recording to be sure that he understood it completely on a word by word basis. I doubt there was a student less in need of tutoring in the history of that program.
He wanted to be friends and I wanted that too, but when he invited me to dinner at his family's home, I turned him down because I had protested, marched, gone on strike and written letters against the war, and I was afraid he would be offended and feel betrayed that I had accepted his friendship if that ever came out, and I didn’t know how I would or should react if it turned out he had actively participated in one or more of many atrocities committed in that war, even though it was clear to me the US bore primary responsibility for them all.
I still have great regret and very mixed feelings about all that.
posted by jamjam at 3:14 PM on January 29, 2023 [8 favorites]
I have eaten at that all you can eat vegan fake meat restaurant. Also the first Boba I ever had was in the San Gabriel Valley area. Certainly lots of great immigrant entrepreneurship, sometimes built on exploitation of other immigrants.
I can tell by the criticism of Senator Wiener above Flamk has the opposite view of the housing crisis as I do. I would note that immigrants crowding into are one of the reason that California has been able to add population despite building very little housing. Most subsidized housing programs are funded from fees on market rate housing. There is no feasible way the state is going to address the housing crisis without allow some more development- and Wieners focus has been infill near transit where it makes sense.
To connect that back to the MP shooting. It sounded like the shooter was living all the way out in Hemet, which is a generally lower-income area 50-60 miles east in Riverside county. Probably extra isolating if you have to drive an hour (or more with traffic) to find ethnic community.
posted by CostcoCultist at 6:29 PM on January 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
I can tell by the criticism of Senator Wiener above Flamk has the opposite view of the housing crisis as I do. I would note that immigrants crowding into are one of the reason that California has been able to add population despite building very little housing. Most subsidized housing programs are funded from fees on market rate housing. There is no feasible way the state is going to address the housing crisis without allow some more development- and Wieners focus has been infill near transit where it makes sense.
To connect that back to the MP shooting. It sounded like the shooter was living all the way out in Hemet, which is a generally lower-income area 50-60 miles east in Riverside county. Probably extra isolating if you have to drive an hour (or more with traffic) to find ethnic community.
posted by CostcoCultist at 6:29 PM on January 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
@Scott_Wiener: "Since Half Moon Bay, there's been an overdue focus on lack of farm worker housing..."*
posted by kliuless at 11:56 PM on January 29, 2023
posted by kliuless at 11:56 PM on January 29, 2023
Some other good articles I came across:
On the importance of having journalists who can speak other languages: We’re both from Shanghai — I can understand his accent, I spoke in his dialect. He said: “You know, I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but for you I can make an exception. Let’s meet in 20 minutes.” The interview with Mike Zhang.
On Asian Americans now buying guns to feel safe - Amid “race-based social upheaval, a lot of Asian Americans are asking themselves, ‘Is the government able to protect me?’ And the answer for a lot of us is, ‘No,’” said Cheng, an author, sport shooter and winner of The History Channel’s “Top Shot” competition.
CA Gov Newsom expresses his frustration with Congress and inaction on gun control and immigration: "We need the federal government to do its job. This is on everybody. We've chosen this. This is our decision to live in these conditions." (Honestly worth watching the whole video.)
Most of the links I found came from journalist Jeong Park, who has been doing a bunch of roundups and is a good follow for Asian American news.
posted by toastyk at 9:49 PM on January 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
On the importance of having journalists who can speak other languages: We’re both from Shanghai — I can understand his accent, I spoke in his dialect. He said: “You know, I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but for you I can make an exception. Let’s meet in 20 minutes.” The interview with Mike Zhang.
On Asian Americans now buying guns to feel safe - Amid “race-based social upheaval, a lot of Asian Americans are asking themselves, ‘Is the government able to protect me?’ And the answer for a lot of us is, ‘No,’” said Cheng, an author, sport shooter and winner of The History Channel’s “Top Shot” competition.
CA Gov Newsom expresses his frustration with Congress and inaction on gun control and immigration: "We need the federal government to do its job. This is on everybody. We've chosen this. This is our decision to live in these conditions." (Honestly worth watching the whole video.)
Most of the links I found came from journalist Jeong Park, who has been doing a bunch of roundups and is a good follow for Asian American news.
posted by toastyk at 9:49 PM on January 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Just came across: one of the Half Moon Bay farms will now build permanent housing for employees, which is expected to take about a year, after terrible living conditions were exposed.
posted by toastyk at 9:11 AM on January 31, 2023
posted by toastyk at 9:11 AM on January 31, 2023
I think my comment above is of a piece piece of the kind of the white supremacy being talked about in some of the comments afterwards. I don't live in MP. I don't even live on the west coast now. But, still when I'm back, my friend and I meet up at that mall for the things I mentioned. We love them. We are respectful always that we are visitors in a community in which we don't belong. But we love it for many reasons, including that it's different from our white but also ethnic community.
Anyway, if I hurt anyone by describing my experiences in MP, I apologize.
posted by atomicstone at 11:49 AM on January 31, 2023
Anyway, if I hurt anyone by describing my experiences in MP, I apologize.
posted by atomicstone at 11:49 AM on January 31, 2023
One of my best friends lives right down the street from where the tragedy occurred. That was a very very bad day, as we couldn't get ahold of him for a few hours after the news broke (he was asleep).
I appreciate what the LA TIMES is doing but also I heard from someone who used to work there that the surest way to get a Pulitzer is do as many stories as possible after a mass-tragedy event, and that's what drives this level of coverage. Which made me feel really bad. Maybe it's not true.
posted by chaz at 11:56 AM on January 31, 2023
I appreciate what the LA TIMES is doing but also I heard from someone who used to work there that the surest way to get a Pulitzer is do as many stories as possible after a mass-tragedy event, and that's what drives this level of coverage. Which made me feel really bad. Maybe it's not true.
posted by chaz at 11:56 AM on January 31, 2023
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I started typing I was shocked, but I'm not. Mass shootings are just something we do in our country. The murders in Monterey Park aren't even the latest mass killings in California this week. Seven people were shot to death in Half Moon Bay, the third mass shooting in just over a week in California.
The 19 kids that were murdered at Uvalde last summer are the same age as my daughter. I drop her off at school every day, and every time I think it might be the last time I see her.
One of the kids at Uvalde was identified by her shoes. Not her clothes. Not her face. Her shoes. Imagine why.
Uvalde broke me. We're going to continue to have blood sacrifices to the 2nd Amendment, and continue to not do anything to stop it.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:29 AM on January 29, 2023 [37 favorites]