San Francisco Chinatown voters flex their muscles in local elections

[Music] well in San Francisco asian-americans make up 33.7% of the population despite representing onethird of the city though the group was never considered an important part the part of the political landscape that all changed in 2022 when the Asian-American voting block woke up and decided to flex their muscle at The Ballot Box and today we're looking at two issues that sparked this Awakening and how politicians have taken [Music] notice when Lily hoe walks through San Francisco's Chinatown she sees power in numbers the API Community is 38% of the population of San Francisco so if it's not important it would be a really big problem and when hate became part of the problem for the aapi community it was Lily and other community members who became part of the solution especially during the rise of attacks on elderly Asian seniors it was anger it was frustration hopelessness it was shock like how can this even happen at the time the community felt their concerns were being ignored by then district attorney chasa Budin nobody's representing the victims they believe was not doing enough to protect them it was outrageous that we were seeing it and then allowing it to happen and in 2022 the power of the Asian vote led the charge to recall the former da and that was just the beginning because during the same year that same voting block of asian-americans frustrated with the direction of San Francisco's education system actually insulted the entire Chinese Community sent a clear message by recalling three members of the school board education and Public Safety were two things the API Community rallied behind what happened was we succeeded in winning historical recalls against four elected officials Han Lee covers both the aapi community and now politics for the SF standard he says the school board and district attorney recalls changed the political landscape forcing City Hall to take notice this community has become increasingly outspoken and also influential politically candidates from mayor London Bri to those looking to win her seat at City Hall you can easily spot them at Asian-American functions courting the Asian American vote and behind the scenes their campaign teams have become more diverse very intentional that they will look for Chinese speaking staffers who who are familiar with the community to do the community outreach other candidates are taking it even one step further for example like Danny sa who's running for district 3 supervisor which includes Chinatown right he's learning cantones for years and now in some of the campaign events or political debate he's showing off his C speaking skill as for Lily helping to organize the aapi vote may be an Awakening of her own this past March she recently won an elected position on the Democratic County Central Committee there's still a lot of Voters in the API community that aren't engaged that aren't voting uh that aren't registered to vote inspired to step into the political arena with more work to do to highlight the power of the Asian-American vote the community recognized that elections are extremely important to those things that they cared about but also to amplify the power of representation and when we say the power of the Asian-American vote we should know that that power lies within the Chinese American Community who represent 180,000 of the nearly 300,000 residents in the cities API community and that power was on display earlier this year we remember back in February before the Lunar New Year mayor London breed had proposed to put a homeless Center in Chinatown near the North Beach border well the mayor received quick backlash from the Chinese community and considering it was before the lunar year year and election year well she back down thanks for watching you can get the latest headlines and weather over on pix plus and remember to like and click the button on the bottom left of your screen to subscribe for the biggest Bay Area News

Channel: KPIX | CBS NEWS BAY AREA

Views: 26,559

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Id: 5P54b9aplU0

Length: 4min 32sec (272 seconds)

Published: Tue May 14 2024