Petaluma teacher reflects on racism against Asian Americans

On a chilly afternoon in March, Elizabeth Escalante placed tea candles and flowers at a makeshift altar she created with friends at the Walnut Park pavilion in downtown Petaluma.

They were preparing final touches for a vigil to honor the March 16 Atlanta mass shooting victims, who were mostly Asian women. Since the pandemic started, there have been 6,600 hate incidents, with women and girls bearing the brunt, according to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization tracking hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islanders.

"Anti-Asian racism in the United States is not new,” said Escalante, a 30-year-old Filipina American special education teacher from Petaluma. “But the uptick in recent hate crimes against Asian people is alarming. My mother’s telling me to be careful out there, but I worry about her safety too,"

At nightfall, about 100 people, each holding a candle, gathered in the park. Escalante was the emcee that evening.

"I've never done anything like this before," she said. But once she warmed up at the mic, she spoke forcefully, urging people to come together to stop racist violence. “We must also protect all our marginalized groups -- Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people -- so that we can all stand together in solidarity," she said.

Among the others who spoke were a young Cambodian American in her 30s, a Taiwanese American teenager, a Chinese immigrant in her 70s, a young mixed-race woman, an LGBTQ-identified Asian American, and an older Japanese American couple, whose parents were incarcerated in World War II concentration camps in the United States. Some had lived in Sonoma County for generations. Others were children of more recent arrivals, who came to the U.S. as war refugees or for better opportunities.

“We are incredibly diverse!” Escalante said in an interview after the event. “Even though others lump us into one identity, Asian Americans represent so many different cultures, languages, experiences and history.”

Escalante was born in San Francisco after her parents migrated from the Philippines. Her father worked as a paratransit driver and her mother as a childcare worker.

“I grew up in a multilingual household,” she said. “My parents spoke a mix of English, Tagalog and a Filipino dialect, Hiligaynon, spoken on my father’s home island. Ironically, although I grew up in one of the most diverse cities in the United States, I felt isolated because I attended a school in an affluent white neighborhood where most of my classmates were Irish Catholic. I didn't know many kids who looked like me. I didn’t know where I’d fit in or what my identity was in a country where race is often defined only in terms of black or white.”

In 2008, her family moved to Petaluma where she attended Santa Rosa Junior College, and Sonoma State University as an undergraduate. She received her master’s degree at Dominican University in San Rafael.

"I've been politically active since the day I pre-registered to vote when I was 17," Escalante said.

But after the pandemic started, and President Trump repeatedly called COVID-19 "the China virus," anti-Asian incidents escalated around the country, pushing Escalante to accelerate her community organizing.

She’s asked to speak at gatherings and events, and attends at least one or two community meetings a week.

"I used to be a wallflower at meetings, but not anymore," she said.

Last year, Escalante was elected president of the Wine Country Young Democrats. She’s also a member of the Sonoma Democratic Party Central Committee and the Commission on Human Rights of Sonoma County. Now, she’s helping to organize the AAPI Coalition of Sonoma County, a new group with the goal of bringing together AAPI people.

“It’s been a whirlwind year,” she said. “I explored new ideas in ways that I haven’t in the past. I've learned from new friends. The pandemic lockdown also grounded me to pay closer attention, listen further, and interpret the meaning behind it all. For such a bizarre and isolating year, it was a really active time for me.”

Escalante hopes to see people in Sonoma County become better educated regarding AAPI issues, as well as electing or appointing more AAPI leaders to represent these communities.

“The AAPI community has a long history here and I refuse for us to be invisible,” she said. “I have so much faith that the AAPI community has the skills and knowledge and that we can do this together.”