Asian-American Communities Step Up Grassroots Safety Efforts

Every weekday morning from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., Sakhone Lasaphangthong walks the streets of Chinatown in Oakland, Calif., scrubbing away graffiti, dropping off McDonald’s to the people who sleep on the streets, checking in with merchants, and waving to the grandmothers buying vegetables. He’s a designated “ambassador,” employed by the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, and his job is to watch over the neighborhood. “My role as ambassador is not to be a security guard or a police officer. It’s mainly to keep Chinatown clean and safe,” says Lasaphangthong, 45, who was born in Laos.

In February, Oakland’s Chinatown was the site of 18 attacks against Asian Americans in just two weeks, according to Alameda County’s district attorney. The March 16 shootings at spas in Atlanta that killed eight people—six of them Asian women—is the latest in a wave of anti-Asian violence across the U.S. An estimated 3,800 hate incidents against Asian Americans have been recorded since the pandemic began, according to the tracking initiative Stop AAPI Hate, most of them reports of verbal harassment but 11% instances of physical assault.