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Brandi Brown has yet to find a Black church near her Southern California home that feels right for her. So when she wants to talk about God, she relies on someone over a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers) away. Like her, Ellen Lo Hoffman, who lives just outside Seattle and is Chinese American, is a progressive Christian. They have known each other through a Christian fellowship for six years. But for the past three years, Hoffman has supported Brown, a former minister, through monthly virtual chats. "How Black women and how women of color experi...
President Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the White House race and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris upended an election year that was already bitter and partisan. It's not just Harris's late entry. It's also the history to be made should she become the first female president who is also multiracial. The daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, Harris is making an historic presidential bid. She has again put a spotlight on American identity politics and the growing number of people who say they are multiracial. Nine million...
For more than one-and-a-half centuries, the Juneteenth holiday has been sacred to many Black communities. It marks the day in 1865 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas found out they had been freed — after the end of the Civil War, and two years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Since it was designated a federal holiday in 2021, Juneteenth has become more universally recognized beyond Black America. Many people get the day off work or school, and there are a plethora of street festivals, fairs, concerts and other e...
TUBA CITY, Ariz. (AP) — Melissa Blackhair is not eager to spring forward Sunday. "I'm dreading it. I just don't want to see how much we have to adjust," Blackhair said while sitting in her home office in Tuba City on the Navajo Nation, the only area in Arizona that follows daylight saving time. With her husband working during the week in Phoenix, their clocks will vary. "Everything in our house is set to daylight saving time. It just kind of is an inconvenience because I am having to remember which car is on daylight and which is on standard t...
GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. (AP) — Declaring it good "not only for Arizona but for the planet," President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed a national monument designation for the greater Grand Canyon, turning the decades-long visions of Native American tribes and environmentalists into reality. Coming as Biden is on a three-state Western trip, the move will help preserve about 1,562 square miles (4,046 square kilometers) just to the north and south of Grand Canyon National Park. It encompasses canyons, plateaus and tributaries that feed a r...
PHOENIX (AP) — Even Southwestern desert residents accustomed to scorching summers are feeling the grip of an extreme heat wave smacking Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Southern California this week with 100-degree-plus temps and excessive heat warnings. To add insult to injury, the region has been left high and dry with no monsoon activity, which can help offset the blazing temperatures. In Arizona, the monsoon season officially begins June 15 and can bring powerful storms with high winds, lightning and heavy bursts of rain. The heat has made p...
Artist Jasmine Cho makes exquisite portraits that champion famous and forgotten Asian Americans. Her canvas? "Cookies, I've always said, are the perfect platform for education, activism and healing because they are one of the most disarming, inviting and surprising mediums," said Cho, who is also a baker. She believes her art comes in part from a sense of not belonging that she felt growing up. May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, but Cho's cookies bring attention to AAPIs every month. The Korean American self-described...
PHOENIX (AP) — A Native American tribe in Arizona reached a deal Thursday with the U.S. government not to use some of its Colorado River water rights in return for $150 million and funding for a pipeline project. The $233 million pact with the Gila River Indian Community, announced in Phoenix, was hailed as an example of the kind of cooperation needed to rescue a river crucial to a massive agricultural industry and essential to more than 40 million people in seven Western U.S. states and Mexico. Officials termed it "compensated c...
Since its debut in 1971, an anti-pollution ad showing a man in Native American attire shed a single tear at the sight of smokestacks and litter taking over a once unblemished landscape has become an indelible piece of TV pop culture. It's been referenced over the decades since on shows like "The Simpsons" and "South Park" and in internet memes. But now a Native American advocacy group that was given the rights to the long-parodied public service announcement is retiring it, saying it has always been inappropriate. The so-called "Crying Indian"...
PHOENIX (AP) — A coalition of Native American groups who have lobbied the Kansas City Chiefs to abandon their mascot, logo and the fan-driven "tomahawk chop" said Thursday the team's return to the Super Bowl has emboldened them more than ever. "People are trying to be really positive about Kansas City and what it does and how like 'Yes, sports binds us all together,' " Rhonda LeValdo, founder of the Kansas City-based Indigenous activist group Not In Our Honor, said at a news conference. "It's not bringing our people into this celebration t...
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona constable who got the job earlier this year when her predecessor quit over frustration about serving eviction notices was shot and killed while carrying out that same duty. The gunman, his neighbor and the manager of his apartment complex also died, authorities said. The shooting happened just after 11 a.m. Thursday at the Lind Commons Apartments in Tucson. Constable Deborah Martinez-Garibay and Angela Fox-Heath, the complex manager, were attempting to serve an eviction notice on Gavin Lee Stansell when he opened f...
For two years now, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across the country have endured racist verbal, physical and sometimes deadly attacks fueled by the coronavirus pandemic. With the start of the Lunar New Year, many are looking forward to carrying out family traditions and joining in community celebrations throughout February. These include family dinners and giving children red envelopes filled with money. New York, Chicago and San Francisco are among the cities with parades planned later this month in their respective Chinatowns. The...
Ambulances in Kansas speed toward hospitals then suddenly change direction because hospitals are full. Employee shortages in New York City cause delays in trash and subway services and diminish the ranks of firefighters and emergency workers. Airport officials shut down security checkpoints at the biggest terminal in Phoenix and schools across the nation struggle to find teachers for their classrooms. The current explosion of omicron-fueled coronavirus infections in the U.S. is causing a breakdown in basic functions and services — the latest i...
When Cincinnati mayoral candidate Aftab Pureval decided to leave his attorney job in 2015 to run for county clerk, it was some fellow Democrats who warned him against the idea. They felt he didn't have a "good ballot name" that would appeal to the predominantly white votership in Hamilton County, Ohio. "When you see A-f-t-a-b on a yard sign, it doesn't occur to people that's a candidate not an insurance company," Pureval told The Associated Press. "When you're Asian, when you have an ethnic name, it's just harder. You've got to be creative,...
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — In the three months since 62-year-old Navajo rug weaver Ella Mae Begay vanished, the haunting unanswered questions sometimes threaten to overwhelm her niece. Seraphine Warren has organized searches of the vast Navajo Nation landscape near her aunt's home in Arizona but is running out of money to pay for gas and food for the volunteers. "Why is it taking so long? Why aren't our prayers being answered?" she asks. Begay is one of thousands of Indigenous women who have disappeared throughout the U.S. Some receive no public a...
PHOENIX (AP) — The Hawaii lieutenant governor watched in horror as protesters showed up outside his condo, yelled at him through bullhorns and beamed strobe lights into the building to harass him over vaccine requirements. A parent in Northern California barged into his daughter's elementary school and punched a teacher in the face over mask rules. At a school in Texas, a parent ripped a mask off a teacher's face during a "Meet the Teacher" event. A Missouri hospital leader was approached in a parking garage this week by a man from Alabama w...
For Christine Liwag Dixon and others, the bloodshed in Georgia — six Asian women among the dead, allegedly killed by a man who blamed his "sexual addiction" — was a new and horrible chapter in the shameful history of Asian women being reduced to sex objects. "I've had people either assume that I'm a sex worker or assume that, as a Filipino woman, I will do anything for money because they assume that I'm poor," said Dixon, a freelance writer and musician in New York City. "I had an old boss who offered me money for sex once." Tuesday's ram...
Asian Americans were already worn down by a year of pandemic-fueled racist attacks when a white gunman was charged with killing eight people, most of them Asian women, at three Atlanta-area massage parlors. Hundreds of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders turned to social media to air their anger, sadness, fear and hopelessness. The hashtag #StopAsianHate was a top trending topic on Twitter hours after the shootings Tuesday evening. “I think the reason why people are feeling so hopeless is because Asian Americans have been ringing the bell o...
Nearly a year after they were almost stabbed to death inside a Midland, Texas, Sam's Club, Bawi Cung and his two sons all have visible scars. It's the unseen ones though that are harder to get over. Cung can't walk through any store without constantly looking in all directions. His 6-year-old son, who now can't move one eyebrow, is afraid to sleep alone. On a Saturday evening in March, when COVID-19 panic shopping gripped the nation, Cung was in search of rice at a cheaper price. The family was in the Sam's Club meat section when Cung suddenly...
PHOENIX (AP) — As the U.S. goes through the most lethal phase of the coronavirus outbreak yet, governors and local officials in hard-hit parts of the country are showing little willingness to impose any new restrictions on businesses to stop the spread. And unlike in 2020, when the debate over lockdowns often split along party lines, both Democratic and Republican leaders are signaling their opposition to forced closings and other measures. Some have expressed fear of compounding the heavy economic damage inflicted by the outbreak. Some see l...
PHOENIX (AP) — This is the first winter in five years that Steve Monk and his wife, Linda, haven't driven to Arizona from their home in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. They typically leave Canada to hunker down in warmer climates for six months. They could fly, skirting travel restrictions at the border, but they'd rather "freeze their buns off" than go to the U.S., where COVID-19 infections and deaths are surging. "It's not worth taking a chance. It's not nearly as bad in this country as it is down there," said Monk, 69. "Pretty much every C...
PHOENIX (AP) — Matilde Gomez wants her mother, Gume, to know how much she appreciates her love and sacrifices. So, she's putting her feelings into a letter. Only Gume Salazar will never get to read it. Instead, it's going on a table in Gomez's home in Arizona that's dedicated to her mother, who died of COVID-19. It will sit alongside fresh flowers and Salazar's blouse on Day of the Dead, a holiday that Salazar actually didn't care for much. "I would think she would be OK with it," Gomez said. "She would see this as a way for me to heal." Day o...
Past portrayals of Native American or Indigenous comic book superheroes would often follow the same checklist — mystical powers, an ability to talk to animals and a costume of either a headdress or a loincloth. "Poor research was done. They were just going off of TV and film," said artist Jeffrey Veregge of the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe in Washington state. One of his biggest complaints is that mainstream "heroes from every place else had actual costumes" while Native characters weren't represented well. Growing up reading comic books on h...
Author Ann M. Martin had no master plan when she decided to make one of the core members of "The Baby-Sitters Club" a Japanese American girl named Claudia. Claudia Kishi happened to be everything the "model minority" stereotype wasn't. She got bad grades. She thrived in art and fashion. She wasn't struggling to belong. For those reasons and more, Asian American girls in the '80s and '90s idolized Claudia and felt seen in teen fiction. Some of those now grown fans concede the books fall short dealing with race, but a new Netflix adaptation is...
Jason Ward fell in love with birds at age 14 when he spotted a peregrine falcon outside the homeless shelter where he was staying with his family. The now 33-year-old Atlanta bird lover parlayed that passion into a YouTube series last year. One of the guests on his first episode of "Birds of North America" was Christian Cooper, a Black bird watcher who was targeted in New York City's Central Park by a white woman after he told her to leash her dog. A video capturing the encounter showed the woman, Amy Cooper (no relation), retaliate by calling...
