Edi­tor’s note: Last year, at NPI’s 2020 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala, we were hon­ored to have Toshiko Grace Hasegawa as one of our fea­tured speak­ers. Toshiko’s reflec­tions on stand­ing strong against hate dur­ing tremen­dous­ly dif­fi­cult times are just as worth watch­ing and hear­ing today as they were almost one year ago when she record­ed them, espe­cial­ly giv­en this week’s hor­rif­ic mur­der spree tar­get­ing Asian Amer­i­cans in Atlanta, Geor­gia. These are moments when we must do all we can to unite our coun­try behind the pro­gres­sive val­ues we hold dear.

Toshiko Hasegawa intro­duces Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren at one of her final cam­paign events of 2020, which was held at Seat­tle Cen­ter (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Meet Toshiko Hasegawa

Toshiko Grace Hasegawa, M.A. is the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Wash­ing­ton State Com­mis­sion on Asian Pacif­ic Amer­i­can Affairs.

Toshiko is a life long res­i­dent of Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton. She cur­rent­ly resides and was raised in Bea­con Hill as a fourth gen­er­a­tion Japan­ese Amer­i­can. She went on to attend Garfield High School in the his­toric Seat­tle Cen­tral District.

She has a Mas­ter of Arts in Crim­i­nal Jus­tice from Seat­tle Uni­ver­si­ty. Toshiko also received a bach­e­lor of Arts in Crim­i­nol­o­gy and Span­ish Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture as an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent at Seat­tle University.

She has earned cer­tifi­cates in effec­tive busi­ness writ­ing, grant writ­ing for non prof­its and pro­tect­ing human research participants.

This week, Toshiko announced her can­di­da­cy for Seat­tle Port Com­mis­sion, a coun­ty­wide office. She will be seek­ing the seat cur­rent­ly held by Peter Stein­brueck. You can learn more about her pri­or­i­ties on her cam­paign web­site.

Watch Toshiko’s remarks at NPI’s 2020 Spring Gala

Orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in April of 2020

Further reading

• Hate Crimes Against Asian Amer­i­cans Are on the Rise. Many Say More Polic­ing Isn’t the Answer (Time Magazine)
• Anger And Fear As Asian Amer­i­can Seniors Tar­get­ed In Bay Area Attacks (NPR)
• Yel­low Per­il: 19th-Cen­tu­ry Scape­goat­ing (AAWW)
• Why it’s time to retire the term ‘Asian Pacif­ic Islander’ (Seat­tle Times)
• Fifty Years Lat­er, For­mer UC Berke­ley Stu­dents Cel­e­brate the Asian-Amer­i­can Move­ment They Began (KQED)
• The Return of “Yel­low Per­il”: Anti-AAPI Rhetoric and Poli­cies Lead­ing up to the 2020 Elec­tion (Stop AAPI Hate)
• Mod­el Minor­i­ty Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks (NPR)

Take action: Stop racism against Asian Americans

These non­prof­its offer forms for report­ing instances of racism and hate crimes:

• Asian Amer­i­cans Advanc­ing Justice
• Asian Pacif­ic Amer­i­can Advocates
• Asian Pacif­ic Plan­ning and Pol­i­cy Coun­cil (A3PCON) — a joint endeav­or with the Chi­nese for Affir­ma­tive Action (CAA) and the Asian Amer­i­can Stud­ies Depart­ment of San Fran­cis­co State University

Sup­port this col­lec­tion of fundrais­ers if you’d like to put your mon­ey to work to stop Asian hate and help vic­tims of the mur­ders in Atlanta.

Need a back­grounder on hate crimes? This guide, pub­lished in 2006, is a good start­ing point for peo­ple unfa­mil­iar with this dif­fi­cult topic.

Down­load OCA’s COVID-19 toolk­it to learn how to avoid even unin­ten­tion­al­ly per­pet­u­at­ing and rein­forc­ing harm­ful stereo­types and false narratives.

Con­sid­er sup­port­ing local non­prof­its that work against vio­lence and racism — like API Chaya — with your time, tal­ent, and trea­sure.

API Chaya empow­ers sur­vivors of gen­der-based vio­lence and human traf­fick­ing to gain safe­ty, con­nec­tion, and well­ness. We build pow­er by edu­cat­ing and mobi­liz­ing South Asian, Asian, Pacif­ic Islander, and all immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties to end exploita­tion, cre­at­ing a world where all peo­ple can heal and thrive.

(State Sen­a­tor and North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion board­mem­ber Man­ka Dhin­gra co-found­ed Chaya, which is now API Chaya, sev­er­al years ago.)

There’s also the Asian Pacif­ic Islander Com­mu­ni­ty Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion:

ACLF is a com­mu­ni­ty-based, non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that trains and sup­ports the lead­er­ship of Asian Pacif­ic Islanders (API) with a com­mit­ment to social jus­tice, com­mu­ni­ty empow­er­ment and pub­lic ser­vice. ACLF’s pur­pose is to pro­vide an envi­ron­ment which fos­ters the devel­op­ment of indi­vid­ual lead­er­ship, com­mu­ni­ty strength, and inter-com­mu­ni­ty uni­ty to pro­mote issues crit­i­cal to API’s.

And you can fol­low the Asian Pacif­ic Islander Coali­tion (APIC) on Facebook.

The most impor­tant thing you can do is con­front racism when­ev­er you’re in a posi­tion to. For exam­ple, if you hear some­one at your work­place, school, or faith com­mu­ni­ty make a racist com­ment, don’t let it slide. Report it and call it out. And if you’re will­ing and able, help that indi­vid­ual start their antiracism jour­ney. AAJC offers bystander inter­ven­tion train­ings — you can sign up for one here.