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Yaroslavsky on Standing Up Against Hate

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke with KPCC’s “AirTalk” about a new report on hate crimes in Los Angeles County. In 2021, the number of reported hate crimes rose from 641 to 786, the highest since 2002, according to the county’s Commission on Human Relations. The most targeted groups were the Black, LGBTQ, Latino and Jewish communities. Yaroslavsky said public officials must use their positions of authority to stand up against hate. “You speak up. You make it socially unacceptable to behave in bigoted ways, not just antisemitism but racism, sexism, homophobia,” said Yaroslavsky, who served as a Los Angeles councilman and supervisor for 40 years. “One of the most important roles an elected official can perform is to set the bar high when it comes to human relations, and to give no quarter to anyone who advocates persecution, who traffics in bigotry and antisemitic or racist tropes.”

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Umemoto on Coalitions Emerging From Firestorm of Racism

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Urban Planning Professor Karen Umemoto spoke to the Los Angeles Times and the podcast Then & Now about the dramatic rise in attacks on Asian Americans. Umemoto called the violence a “shadow epidemic,” stoked by former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak. “Trump’s role in exacerbating and igniting this firestorm can’t be denied,” she told the L.A. Times. But she also pointed to a new era of coalition-building among communities of color long targeted by a culture steeped in white supremacy. “One of Trump’s legacies is sparking more activism and more acts of solidarity across many groups who became victim of many of his policies and rhetoric,” she told the podcast, produced by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. To tackle structural racism at its roots, Umemoto called for educating schoolchildren about the history and contributions of Asian Americans so that they are no longer considered the “perpetual foreigner.”

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Asian American Businesses Hit Disproportionately Hard, Ong Finds

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A report co-authored by Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, was featured in a CNN article about combating anti-Asian hate and racism. Asian Americans have been the victims of verbal, physical and economic attacks across the country. One study found that anti-Asian hate crimes have more than doubled during the pandemic. Ong’s report, a collaboration between the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, summarized the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Asian Americans. The report explained that Asian American businesses felt the economic impact of the pandemic earlier and more deeply than others because of xenophobia and racialized blaming. “Unemployment severely impacted the more disadvantaged Asian Americans,” Ong wrote. While many businesses have struggled during the pandemic, discrimination has exacerbated the impact on Asian American businesses.

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Holloway on Dating Apps as a Tool for Crime

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Ian Holloway, associate professor of social welfare, spoke to NBC News about a string of attacks against gay men who were targeted through the dating app Grindr. Anti-LGBTQ hate crimes rose 3 percent nationally in 2017, the story reported. In some cases, apps such as Grindr are used to identify victims who may be kidnapped, robbed, carjacked, assaulted or slain. Holloway noted that the risk is international in scope. “There are people impersonating romantic partners and friends in countries where being gay is illegal, then threatening to out the user,” he said. Experts advise app users to guard their personal information and create a safety plan. Holloway noted that LGBTQ dating platforms can have a positive impact. “Parts of the U.S. can be incredibly isolating for LGBTQ people, which is where the apps come in,” he said. “For people living in these areas or in countries where homosexuality is criminalized, apps can be a way to build community.”

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LGBT Communities Fighting for Social and Spatial Change

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Despite recent gains in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the United States such as gay marriage and the right to serve openly in the military, the fight against equality for LGBT people appears to be gaining strength, according to Kian Goh, assistant professor of urban planning. Violence against LGBT people has continued “unabated, however, during the recent period of legislative wins,” Goh writes in a recently published article, “Safe Cities and Queer Spaces: The Urban Politics of Radical LGBT Activism.” In the online article in Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Goh cites data from GLAAD and the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, indicating that 2015 and 2016 were the “most deadly on record for transgender people in the United States, overwhelmingly affecting transgender women of color.” In LGBT communities, homelessness continues to be an issue, and socioeconomic disparities are reinforced, “particularly among women, people of color, young and old, and gender-nonconforming.” Goh adds that these overlapping identities and “systems of oppression exacerbate the marginalization of LGBT-identified people, creating ‘unjust geographies’ that intertwine race, class gender and sexuality.” Goh looks at how researchers, planners and others who contribute to the “making of cities” can understand and contribute to social movements, change and justice, and — through participatory observation and working with these groups — examines the efforts of two New York-based queer activist groups fighting for social and spatial change. — Stan Paul