‘You Have to Give Us Respect’: How Asian Americans Fueled the San Francisco Recall
The New York Times
The landslide vote to remove three school board members cut across ethnicities and income levels. But Chinese American voters and volunteers were crucial to victory, organizers say.
SAN FRANCISCO — As Election Day approached, a flurry of messages flashed across the phones of San Francisco’s Chinese American community. “Remember to vote,” said one message in Chinese from a campaign organizer, Selena Chu. “And throw out the commissioners who are discriminating against us and disrespecting our community.”
The lopsided victory in a recall election on Tuesday that ousted three members of the San Francisco school board shook the city’s liberal establishment and was a resounding alarm of parental anger over the way the public school system handled the coronavirus pandemic.
Parents of varying ethnicities and income levels who had coalesced last year while San Francisco schools remained closed — they stayed shut for much longer than those in other large cities — organized themselves through Facebook groups and vowed to push out Board of Education members for what they saw as incompetence. They kept their promise: The three commissioners were removed by as much as 79 percent of voters, an unequivocal rejection in a city renowned for fractious politics.
