EthnicMajority

(Washington Post) America’s historic Chinatowns, home for a century to immigrants seeking social support and refuge from racism, are fading as rising living costs, jobs elsewhere and a desire for wider spaces lure Asian-Americans more than ever to the suburbs.

As the Lunar New Year begins Monday, annual festivities in Washington, D.C.’s shriveled Chinatown are, for the first time, being promoted by a large marketing firm. New York’s Chinatown, one of the nation’s oldest, has lost its status as home to the city’s largest Chinese population, based on the 2010 census.

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(AFP) A Chinese-American former city official became the first Asian-American to be elected mayor of San Francisco, which has one of the oldest Chinatowns in the United States, results showed.

Interim mayor Ed Lee polled 61 percent after a second stage of counting in the city's "ranked-choice" voting system, in which voters choose their top three candidates, about 22 percent of his nearest rival.

He needed 50 percent plus one vote for victory, but had not reached that in an initial count of first-preference votes.

"The voters of San Francisco want four more years of what we've been doing — that's job creation, that's creating more unity," a victorious Lee told reporters at City Hall after the updated results were announced.

"I'm going to do my best to keep uniting the city."

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(AP) Jeff Adachi says he grew up hearing the stories of his Japanese-American family's internment during World War II.

"They lost everything. But they taught me not to be bitter, to get an education and to stand up for what's right," Adachi, San Francisco's public defender, writes on the website devoted to his campaign for the city's mayor.

He's one of six Asian-Americans candidates who are drawing on their life stories of immigration, discrimination and empowerment as they try to become the first Asian-American elected mayor in the city's history.

San Francisco already has an Asian-American mayor in Ed Lee, who was appointed in January. But the Nov. 8 election is being seen as an historic moment in a city that has the largest percentage of Asian-Americans in the continental United States and boasts the nation's oldest Chinatown.

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(San Francisco Chronicle) It's no surprise that David Chiu, Ed Lee and Leland Yee are pushing their campaigns for mayor in the city's Asian neighborhoods. But it's the Chinese-language literature put out by Tony Hall, Joanna Rees and virtually every other candidate for San Francisco's top job that highlights the growing political clout of the city's Asian American community.

"For decades, Chinatown was an ATM for local politicians, a place where they could go and get campaign money," said David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, which works to boost Asian American voter registration. "Now the politicians are coming into our community seeking our votes, not just our cash."

(SF Gate) The leader of the San Francisco chapter of the NAACP said Friday that US Airways engaged in discriminatory conduct by requiring an African American passenger to pull up his pants before boarding a plane, but allowing a white man to board another flight wearing little but women’s undergarments.

The Rev. Amos Brown said the group’s national leaders would contact airline officials to suggest sensitivity training for executives and ask them to “atone, repent and show their wrongness is understood.”

“The NAACP, in no uncertain terms, contends that this young man was profiled,” Brown said in reference to Deshon Marman, the 20-year-old passenger who was asked to lift up his pants by an employee before he boarded a June 15 flight at San Francisco International Airport. “He’s been a victim of racial injustice, and US Air owes to him and his mother an apology.”

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(AP) City supervisors on Friday overwhelmingly backed City Administrator Edwin Lee to be the interim mayor, a move that could lead to San Francisco’s first Asian-American leader.

During its final meeting, the outgoing Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 to name Lee to the post being vacated by Gavin Newsom, the state’s newly elected lieutenant governor.

The vote was nonbinding, however, because Newsom has not yet left office. The pick also must be confirmed by the new board, which has four incoming members, scheduled to take office this weekend.

But even without the newcomers’ support, the board still has the six votes needed to confirm Lee if the carry-over members stay consistent.

“It’s crystal clear now that Ed Lee will become mayor,” Newsom said Friday. “Unless people start flipping, the core six (votes) will be here.”

If confirmed, the 58-year-old Lee would become the first Chinese-American to lead the city, which is more than one-third Asian. The board was expected to take up the issue Tuesday.

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(San Francisco Chronicle) San Francisco public health officials and Asian community leaders are trying to eradicate hepatitis B from the city – a tall order, considering the city has the highest concentration of hepatitis B in the country, as well as the highest rates of liver cancer, which is usually caused by the virus.

The key to wiping out hepatitis B – and protecting people from liver cancer – is to make screening a basic part of health care, especially among Asians, say doctors and Asian American health advocates who have launched a campaign to get more people tested.

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