Amid the current spike in harassment and crimes targeting Asian Americans, an Echo Park woman is upset and angry after seeing a hateful letter that was sent to the home of her Asian American parents at Leisure World in Seal Beach.
The letter was postmarked on the same day that Claudia Choi's father, Byong, died last week.
“To target a grieving widow, it’s disgusting,” Claudia Choi told CBS-2.
The letter read: “Now that Byong is gone, it’s one less Asian we have to put up with in Leisure World… Watch out! Pack your bags and go back to your country where you belong.”
“Racism and hatred and cruelty needs to be denounced at every turn,” Choi says. “It’ not just when somebody gets beaten up, although that’s terrible or when women get murdered, that’s awful but when your neighbor says something like they need to go home or makes an Asian joke, you need to speak up and say that is not okay because these little things that we allow to pass lead to bigger things.”
She believes the letter came from someone who is living in her parents' Leisure World community, and has reported it to Seal Beach police and also to the FBI because it was sent through the mail.
In response to the increase in attacks against Asian-Americans and Pacific-Islanders, a Torrance-area lawmaker seeks to create a statewide hate crime hotline.
Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi says the goal is to provide a "safe space" to make it "as easy as possible" for victims to report hate crimes.
His bill would require the state's Department of Justice to set up a toll-free hotline and an online system in various languages that victims and witnesses could use to anonymously report hate crimes and incidents.
Several Los Angeles City Council members recently introduced two motions and a resolution in an attempt to address a rise in hate crimes and harassment against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.
One motion -- which was introduced by Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez and Councilmen John Lee, Mitch O'Farrell and Joe Buscaino -- calls for the Los Angeles Police Department to report on data of the increased crimes against Asian Americans and on the department's response to the trend. It also instructs the police department to report on potential resources it could use to reduce instances of hate crimes against Asian Americans and cultural sites and to identify and prosecute suspects responsible for the crimes.