#MontereyPark, Hawaiian Occupation, Israeli Apartheid
KTF Weekly Newsletter
Hey everybody,
We must be able to hold joy and grief, celebration and lament in beautiful tension to be fully present to all that’s around us. But for our Asian American readers and those affected by the shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, the joy of the Lunar New Year and the pain of mass violence may feel overwhelming. We sit with you, our AAPI family, and invite you to receive grace and be gentle with yourself. We mourn with you, long for healing and justice, and seek to partner with you in courageous action to prevent further tragedies like these.
For those of you looking for more wisdom on how to respond to the particular suffering of our AAPI neighbors, especially as allies, we recommend following these leaders on social media: Erna Kim Hackett, Kathy Khang, Irene Cho, and Sandra Maria Van Opstal.
And now, on to our resources for this week.
Suzie’s recommendations:
In 2021, Human Rights Watch published a groundbreaking report that highlighted and clearly labeled crimes of apartheid perpetrated by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people. Last year, the Harvard Kennedy School denied Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch and one of the editors of that report, a fellowship due to allegations that his criticism of the State of Israel was tantamount to antisemitism. Harvard eventually reversed its decision after an exposé published by The Nation further suggested undue donor influence as the primary cause of Roth’s rejection. This New York Time’s piece provides an insightful overview of the whole debacle and one of the central questions that it hinges on: to what extent is criticism of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinian people inherently antisemitic? The Bible warns us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. As followers of Christ, we must be able to identify and not shy away from the tension that exists in an epoch witnessing both a rise in antisemitism and an increasingly far-right, oppressive Israeli government. It takes wisdom and innocence to discern how to stand against both.
As a white American, I grew up with sensationalized images of Hawaii that consisted primarily of pristine beaches, floral leis, and Mai Tais. Yet this carefully curated picture of a peaceful “Paradise on Earth” belies the violence that white Americans like me perpetrated to seize Hawaiian land, and the persistent injustice of that land’s ongoing occupation and exploitation by the United States at great cost to the Hawaiian people. This thread by MacArthur Fellow and antiracist educator Ibram X. Kendi provides a quick snapshot of some of the “unsettling truths” — to quote Mark Charles — that are absent from our American history textbooks. These are facts that we would do well to learn and respond to in our collective pursuit of justice in a world still shaped by greed and white supremacy.
Last year, I wrote a piece that touched on the horrific health crisis of the rising Black maternal mortality rate in this country. This New York Times article by Erica L. Green provides a sobering yet hopeful snapshot of an initiative by an organization of Black doulas called Parents as Teachers that is working to address that crisis. The organization is now supported in part by the $1.7 trillion federal spending bill passed by Congress last year. It provides a service typically associated with more affluent white women to expectant Black mothers in an intervention that has proven to not only significantly increase the quality of their care, but to save lives. The stories highlighted here will give you cause to lament, but also reason to celebrate the heroes who are stepping up to the plate and turning personal tragedies into an opportunity to serve. What could be more Christlike than that?
Jonathan’s recommendations:
Erna Kim Hackett has wise words for Asian-American women who are headed back to work in the wake of a mass shooting that tragically took the lives of 11 people during a Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park, California. The insight that “[o]ur emotions don’t move at the speed of social media,” the freedom to say “no” when asked to address the situation for colleagues at work, and the erasure of the Asian American experience through the silence that centers the White experience stood out to me as places where I could lean in, learn, and love my neighbors well. Erna’s message meets her audience but is instructive for all of us as we love Jesus and our neighbors as best we can in the midst of such pain and tragedy.
There have been more mass shootings in 2023 than there have been days in the year. This website is keeping count and as followers of Jesus, we must pray and engage, press in and intercede so that we might respond in accordance with the God we claim to follow, and not just the culture that pervades our reality. I invite you to use this as a tool to do just that. To actively read and pray, not passively observe and consume.
There were nine days in 2022 where police didn’t kill someone, but on average, three people die per day at the hands of law enforcement in the United States. In total, 1,123 people lost their lives in 2022 according to Mapping Police Violence, and the people at greatest risk are Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander. I invite you again, as one who could buckle under the weight of such suffering, avoid it altogether, become numb to the constant bombardment of this expression of our collective brokenness, or some other understandable reaction — to pray. Let us join the chorus of voices and cry out for justice, mercy, and for the kingdom of God to come.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
The KTF team