Reporter Yucheng Tang honored for story that shows Chinese-Mexican connection
by Lindajoy Fenley | Posted November 11, 2025
Writer/editor Anthony Advincula presents Yucheng Tang with the top award for culture reporting at the Nov. 7 ACoM Expo in Oakland.
Shortly after Yucheng Tang moved to Chico a year ago to report for ChicoSol, he connected the traditional Chinese Tomb Sweeping Day with Mexico’s Day of the Dead tradition. On. Nov. 7, his story of cultural rediscovery that showcased those traditions side-by-side won a first place at American Community Media’s (ACoM’s) annual award ceremony.
In his acceptance speech, Tang noted he was able to bring two different cultures together through “good storytelling … sincerity and curiosity.” He also expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to introduce people in “a small town like Chico” to Asian culture and heritage.
Anthony Advincula, one of the judges for the ACoM contest, told ChicoSolthat selecting the winners was challenging because of a plethora of excellent entries.read more
California hotline and Oroville's cultural center offer assistance
by Yucheng Tang | Posted January 21, 2025
photo by Yucheng Tang
Seng Yang, director of Butte County’s Hmong Cultural Center.
Among more than a thousand reports received by the California vs Hate hotline in the first year, the most commonly cited form of hate was based on race and ethnicity.
Anti-Black bias was the most common, followed by anti-Latino and anti-Asian, said Kevin Kish, director of the California Civil Rights Department, during a Jan. 17 briefing organized by Ethnic Media Services (EMS).
The Civil Rights Department launched the hotline in May 2023, and connects victims and witnesses of hate incidents and hate crimes with the resources they may need, including legal services, counseling, mental health services and financial assistance. People can report online in 15 languages, including English, Spanish, Hmong, Filipino and Chinese, or by phone in 200 languages.
In its first year, the hotline was used by nearly 80% of California’s counties, Kish said, including Butte County.
Seng Yang, the director of the Hmong Cultural Center in Oroville, in an interview with ChicoSol discussed a couple of incidents that his clients encountered last year that he believes were related to their ethnicity.
In one case, a woman told Yang that some people tried to destroy pots of herbs surrounding her house and threatened her with violence. The woman is in her 70s, barely speaks English and was saddened by the confrontation, Yang said.
Another Hmong elder was attacked and bitten by a dog in Oroville’s Southside while the homeowner failed to intervene, he said.
“It’s incredibly important to have services created like the California vs Hate hotline that helps spotlight and make mainstream our community’s issues,” said Gaonou Vang, who spoke at the EMS briefing and is communications and narrative manager at Hmong Innovating Politics.
However, Vang noted that it requires foundational and intimate trust in order for the hotline to succeed and minimize under-reporting, especially when Hmong and Southeast Asian American people are tightly wound within their community systems, such as the Hmong 18-clan system. (Hmong-Americans are organized into an 18-clan structure; all members of a clan recognize that they are related by a common ancestor.)
Kish said there are various reasons for the under-reporting of hate incidents, including lack of confidence in the government due to previous disappointing experiences, lack of legal knowledge, language barriers, fear of contacting law enforcement among immigrants, and jurisdictional issues between tribal, local, state and federal authorities for indigenous communities.
The purpose of launching this hotline is to overcome all those barriers, Kish said.
“It’s designed to help everyone who experiences hate, no matter who they are, no matter where they are in our state, and no matter whether what they experienced was in fact a crime,” Kish said. “You can report anonymously if that’s what you choose to do. You don’t have to disclose immigration status.”
“What you get out of the hotline is driven by what you want, what you identify as needing,” Kish added.
At the Hmong Cultural Center in Oroville, Yang noted that the elderly face especially tough circumstances. He said some of the Hmong elders suffer from mental health issues including depression. They often cannot speak English, have no social life and feel isolated, some of them having nightmares about the war they went through when they were young and the journey of escape from their hometowns.
The Center organizes in-person meetings for the elderly three times every month and conducts home visits to senior clients. “We’ve been here to share, to talk about social life, and also help them, educate them about the kind of resources that might be provided for them,” Yang said.
At the EMS briefing, Vang said that some Hmong in California worry about being deported, which might discourage them from reporting hate incidents to the government.
Kish said rural counties are among those that haven’t produced calls to the hotline. He said the lack of reporting from rural California is reflected in the Attorney General’s hate crime report. “Many of these (rural) counties are reporting zero or very few hate crimes,” he noted.
(A hate crime — not just a hate incident — refers to a criminal offense driven by a bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.)
According to the Attorney General’s 2023 hate crime report, Butte County reported 19 hate crime offenses; the Civil Rights Department says the hotline was used by county residents fewer than 10 times in its first year.
The Attorney General’s report says Shasta County reported 15 offenses, while rural Glenn County west of Butte reported zero hate crimes.
Report a hate incident or hate crime by phone at 833-866-4283. Report online here.
Yucheng Tang is a California Local News Fellow reporting for ChicoSol.
YUBA CITY — Sikh communities want more visibility and want their stories heard.
Not only should the religious stories be told, but also the stories about how Sikh farmers grow peaches and walnuts, how Sikh community members import food from Mexico or export into Canada, and how they contribute to California’s economy. That’s the view of Jasbir Singh Kang, co-founder of the Punjabi American Heritage Society in Sutter County.
The “Sikh Listening Session” held in Yuba City on Oct. 23 was organized by the California Racial Equity Commission and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs (CAPIAA), and gave community members the opportunity to share their stories.read more
Some candidates rely on racist tropes or discriminatory language
by Natalie Hanson | Posted September 4, 2024
photo courtesy of Yee campaign
District 1 candidate Rose Yee attending the Democratic National Convention.
As racist and discriminatory speech become commonplace in electoral campaigns, candidates and campaign organizers are calling for a response. In Butte County and elsewhere, some would like elected officials to speak against discrimination and in favor of protecting marginalized Californians.
On a recent panel convened by Ethnic Media Services, organizers said that anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Republican Party is growing. Panelists said that many incumbents and GOP candidates use slurs against migrants, which fuels fear and anger against people who seek a better life in America.
Hateful speech has been on the rise since 2016, said David Welch, secretary of the Butte County Democratic Party and chairperson for the Democratic Action Club of Chico. Welch said that “free floating anger” came to the surface with Donald Trump’s rise to power and the presidency.
Welch said that offensive speech has spread to local politics in Butte County, including both discriminatory language and “othering” directed at vulnerable groups like the homeless.
Rose Yee, who is running against incumbent Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) for his District 1 congressional seat, said elected officials are tasked with challenging longstanding harm to their constituents.
“Only by naming harm can we start to undo it,” Yee said. “If elected officials care for everyone in our community — as they should — they are obligated to object when anyone in our community is subject to identity-based attacks.”
Anti-immigrant speech in the North State
Some elected officials say they continue to face anti-immigrant attitudes, despite their work to advocate for their constituents.
When Gridley City Councilmember Catalina Sanchez ran for office in 2020 alongside two other Latino candidates, ChicoSol reported on the discrimination the trio faced. For example, the Butte County Farm Bureau endorsed an ad telling voters to support “homegrown leadership” — a phrase that Sanchez said specifically targeted the immigrant community and implied that Latino candidates may not be citizens.
“I grew up here and I’m a citizen. Never did I think the bullying would be about race,” Sanchez said.
In addition, Sanchez said she found herself needing to be more assertive when first elected to the City Council as a woman and person of color in order to be taken seriously.
She said she finds it offensive to watch the region’s elected leadership call people “illegal” and advocate for “building the wall” in public statements. Their own communities benefit from employing migrants, she said.
“When local electeds speak to target border security and building a wall, they forget who they are talking about,” she said. “It’s their constituents they are talking negatively about. It’s also the undocumented immigrant community from Yuba City to the Oregon Border that is giving cheap, back-breaking labor to the ag industry with profits from the harvest of peaches, walnuts, grapes and rice in this region.”
As president in 2019, Trump referred to other countries as “totally broken and crime infested places” and erroneously suggested that some progressive women members of Congress were from those countries.
Building the enemy
Manuel Ortiz Escámez, a sociologist and journalist who co-founded the news organization Peninsula 360 in Redwood City, said anti-immigrant language relies on the concept of “building the enemy.” The concept names the use of propaganda to vilify a group of people as a political tool to sow division and organize power around oppressing that group, he said.
Politicians know the power of words, and could speak out against propaganda, Ortiz added. He pointed out that racist speech toward immigrants, most notably from former President Donald Trump, has been successful in galvanizing support within some voter groups.
“Politics needs an enemy, because the enemy creates the feeling or urgency, creates unity, and the need of a savior, a hero,” Ortiz said. He pointed out periods in California’s history when anti-immigrant speech hurt communities such as Chinese workers, including some who lived and worked in Chico.
There are different ways to respond to hateful speech, according to Gustavo Gasca Gomez. An immigration outreach specialist with the Education and Leadership Foundation, he serves immigrants and first-generation children in Fresno, including those who need help with reporting hate crimes to authorities. As a former immigrant farmworker, he said discriminatory campaign speech can perpetuate stereotypes that are “demeaning” to him and his community.
As someone with a long background in campaign-watching in the North State, Welch agrees, stating: “Varying degrees of racism and bigotry against the newcomer have been a pervasive part of American history. So it’s really important that we acknowledge that to not deny that reality, and be willing to call attention to that.”
Welch said that successful candidates must call out hateful speech rather than “normalize it.”
For example, he said, City Councilmember Addison Winslow has spoken against language that many find demeaning of homeless people. Council candidate Mike Johnson has said he hopes to reduce the “othering” of homeless people through verbal and physical attacks.
Welch said that other elected officials ought to do the same, noting that candidates for office could partner with local organizations to show their support for marginalized people.
Natalie Hanson is a contributing editor to ChicoSol. This story was supported by an Ethnic Media Services Stop the Hate fellowship.
Community organizations are relying heavily on partnerships with the Golden State’s government to aid LGBTQ people who face an increase in hate crimes across California.
There were 405 reported hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation bias (an increase of 3.6% from the previous year) in 2023, and 76 hate crime events motivated by anti-transgender bias (an increase of 7.04%). California’s attorney general Rob Bonta called those increased reports “alarming,” according to a report from Ethnic Media Services (EMS).
The state’s Department of Justice reports that despite the category increases cited above, there was a 7.1% decrease overall in hate crimes in 2023 from the previous year.
A recent LA Times/National Opinion Research Center poll on LGBTQ+ communities shows that most Americans accept same-sex marriage and laws to protect queer people from job discrimination. However, the same poll showed lower public approval on matters and legislation affecting trans and nonbinary people.
Representatives from the California Civil Rights Department, community-based organizations and LGBTQ+ advocates discussed the rise in some hate crimes in a panel convened by EMS last week. The speakers said that people may have different experiences with hate and discrimination depending on race, age, class, gender and other factors.
The state said that data collected within the latest year of operating the CA vs. Hate hotline demonstrates how the LGBTQ+ community’s input has shaped the services offered to people reporting hate crimes.
Toni Newman of the Black Leadership Council — a collection of leaders seeking to improve conditions for Black Californians and other vulnerable populations — said that 19 transgender people were killed in California in 2024. About 68% of the victims were people of color, and 32% were Black, they said.
Black transgender people are at particular risk of experiencing hate and violence, as well as employment and housing discrimination, Newman said.
Newman blamed religious institutions, and extremist groups for targeting transgender people, who are only 1.5% of the national population, with nearly 500 bills across the country.
However, “It is not all doom and gloom,” Newman said. The state legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 approved funding for the Intersex Heath and Equity unit, the first in the nation, to fund transgender-supporting organizations.
The governor also this month approved a law to protect public school children from being outed to their parents by school district employees.
Newman told the panel: “Transgender and nonconforming people are Americans. We are not asking for anything but fair treatment.”
Andy Ruiz, who provides legal support at the Transgender Health Clinic at St. John’s Community Health in Los Angeles, said that empowering the public and community organizations to report hate crimes is critical to protect LGBTQ people.
Ruiz said they often work with LGBTQ immigrants who are experiencing dangerous hate incidents. Latinos in San Diego and other cities are often reluctant to call police for help with hate — especially if that hate comes from family members, they said.
“I meet a lot of LGBTQ youth who are victims of hate incidents by their own relatives,” Ruiz said. “Restorative justice has been very helpful in Latino families in discussing the pain someone feels when they’re misgendered, or when they face (criticism) when they say they’re LGBTQ.”
Aries Rivers Yumul, a teacher and coordinator of LGBTQ+ District Resource and Support at the Santa Clara County Office of Education, said that LGBTQ students are still more likely to have higher absentee rates due to cyberbullying and other safety concerns.
Schools are the last bastions of public services for many students across the country, Yumul said, and public employees are often the first line of defense for the most vulnerable students.
“I think our youth are very much inundated with what’s happening in social media, what’s happening nationwide,” Yumul said. “They’re seeing and experiencing what it means to really be cared for, but they’re also seeing new ways that hate can spread.”
Becky Monroe, Deputy Director of Strategic Initiatives and External Affairs at the California Civil Rights Department, said that hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation have consistently increased statewide since 2014. However, she cautioned the panel that the state takes into account the fact that hate crimes are underreported.
Monroe said that people do not need to have legal experience to know if the harm they experience rises to the level of hate crimes, and the state can step in to help make that determination. The state also is working with agencies with culturally competent workers who can also help provide support for people affected by hate crimes.
“If you report, you will get support,” Monroe promised.
Natalie Hanson is a contributing editor at ChicoSol News.
by Karen Laslo and Leslie Layton | Posted June 19, 2024
photo by Karen Laslo
Juneteenth at DeGarmo Park in Chico.
A Juneteenth celebration, with food, music and speeches, drew a cross-section of the community to DeGarmo Park today to celebrate the federal holiday that commemorates the end of slavery.
“We’re really going for a family-reunion type vibe,” said Christina Archie, an organizer with the group, Building Leaders, Advocates & Community Connections (BLACC) late in the afternoon. “We’re just wanting people to feel the love within the community. We’re working on that connection piece, community connection. It’s been really cool.”
BLACC organized the event because members felt it was important to “bring the community together” to celebrate a day that was “very important in American history, Black history,” Archie added.
“There’s still lots of work to do, but it’s very important to celebrate all the accomplishments that have happened thus far,” Archie told ChicoSol. “We want to encourage people to advocate for themselves, advocate for their people, their community.
“It’s an election year and there are a lot of important things on the ballot. so we’re encouraging people to register to vote. I know that with the climate of things, people sometimes feel their vote doesn’t matter. A lot of people fought for us to have this right to vote, so let’s utilize our voice.”
BLACC has members in Chico, Oroville and Paradise, and Archie said 34 vendors or groups signed up to host booths at today’s celebration. Sponsors included United Way, the California Health Collaborative, and the NAACP Butte County.
Juneteenth celebrations are a longstanding tradition in many Black communities, marking the day of June 19, 1865, when final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas was ordered. Many slaves, however, weren’t freed until the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865 or even much later.
Juneteenth was made a federal holiday in 2021 when President Joe Biden signed the National Independence Day Act.
Karen Laslo is a photojournalist and occasional contributor to ChicoSol. Leslie Layton is editor.
