Candlelight vigil protests anti-Asian violence, honors people killed in recent mass shootings
Kim Nguyen, a 64-year-old Westminster resident, enrolled into classes at the Vietnam Martial Art Center a few months ago.
“I had nothing to do. I wanted to exercise and learn to protect myself,” the retiree said.
On Tuesday, she was one of a handful of the center’s students and instructors teaching personal safety and self-defense tips in front of Advance Beauty College in Garden Grove.
Nailing it for America, an all-volunteer initiative, made up of local beauty and spa industry figures led Tuesday’s event in honor of Atlanta and Boulder shooting victims. It started with personal safety tips and closed with a candlelight vigil.
To get out of a wrist hold in a self-defense scenario, Kim said you might want to try breaking the assailant’s fingers. Twist the wrist being held by the assailant and grab one of their fingers. Any finger will do. Then pull it toward the back of their hand.
Kim put her white Crocs to the side as she displayed another scenario where she is lying on her back, and 62-year-old Don Ludolph, a martial art center instructor, stood over her playing the assailant role.
A mix of beauty school students and volunteers from local organizations stood in clusters learning the basic techniques.
“It was important for us to have this because the people that got killed that day were part of the spa and health industry where our students, who are primarily Asian females, are going into,” said Linh Nguyen, vice president of Advance Beauty College. “We wanted to empower them, so that they can learn some skills to be able to feel a little bit better.”
These self-defense scenarios aren’t outlandish.
Asian American residents in Orange County and across the United States have dealt with a significant uptick of hate speech, harassment and violence since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Although final statistics are still in the works, OC Human Relations Chief Executive Alison Edwards has said preliminary numbers indicate a tenfold increase in hate incidents during the past year.
Two Bolsa Grande High School students recorded themselves screaming “coronavirus” at Asian American students during a school assembly in a YouTube video that went viral.
In the Ladera Ranch neighborhood, teens harassed a family by throwing rocks and yelling racial slurs. A 49-year-old reported hate speech she’d heard in both English and Spanish while walking in La Habra.
In Seal Beach, an 82-year-old widow received a racist letter that said her husband’s recent death “makes it one less Asian to put up with in Leisure World.” A 70-year-old was physically attacked while walking his dog in Irvine.
For Tam Nguyen, Nailing it for America organizer and president of Advance Beauty College in Garden Grove and Laguna Hills, the Tuesday event is the third of the same ilk this month.
On March 8, a vigil was held in Fountain Valley to honor victims of COVID-19 and to bring attention to the surge of anti-Asian hate crimes. Then another vigil was immediately held after the Atlanta spa shootings, where a white man killed eight people including six Asian women at three different spas.
“We’ve seen this over and over again,” Tam said. “There is a shooting, there’s coverage, there’s people rallying and coming together. Then the story just peters out. We didn’t want that to happen. We wanted to continue highlighting this ongoing issue of hate that goes back many many decades.”
Linh and Tam are siblings and second generation owners of the small family business started by their Vietnamese American refugee parents. Their 76-year-old mother, Kien Nguyen, donated money to skywrite “No Hate” above the business for the Tuesday event. Due to high winds, the skywriting was postponed to next week.
“They say I have COVID, stay away and go back to your home, and I said my home is here. I’ve been here for almost 50 years,” Kien said. “If I need to go somewhere, I’m very careful because I’m scared. I don’t feel comfortable and I don’t feel safe.”
Nailing it for America came together to help prepare strategies to reopen salons and spas safely last year. The grass-roots group also organized a number of drives donating thousands of masks and gloves to healthcare workers as well as meals to medical centers, grocery store workers, senior facilities, shelters and others in need.
The drives, vigils and rallies have brought local organizations and businesses together throughout the year to work for the same cause.
Bolsa Grande High School chapter of Project Vietnam, a service and medical based club working to better the Vietnamese community through healthcare, provided on-site COVID-19 testing during the Tuesday event.
“The majority around here are Vietnamese American, and I feel safe in this bubble, but I know it’s not always going to be this way outside. It’s better to be safe than sorry,” said Pauline Vuong, co-president of the club, as she watched a self-defense demonstration.
About an hour later, Bolsa Grande students also held a banner reading “Stop Asian Hate,” at the candlelight vigil near the pond at Community Center Park where Buddhist leader Ni Su Thich Nu Nhu Nhu guided a multi-faith gathering.
A 25-year-old Garden Grove resident wasn’t aware of the vigil beforehand, but decided to stop by and pay her respects when she saw volunteers set up an altar and luminaries on the grass.
“I wanted to hear what the community was feeling,” said Allison, who only wanted to be identified by her first name. “My perspective on what’s happening is that it’s rooted in systems and structures rather than a few isolated incidents.”
Peter Villafañe, 24, and Kaityn Rowell, 19, drove to the vigil from Long Beach.
“I wanted to be able to grieve with people in person and listen to my community — to connect,” Villafañe said.
Villafañe was holding a sign in a Tagalog phrase translating to “one fall,” a reference to a rallying cry during the farmworkers movement of the mid-20th century meaning “when one falls, we all fall.”
Attendees, which included Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer, stood around the park’s pond holding luminaries well past 8 p.m.
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