Housing, healthcare and cultural challenges facing current and formerly incarcerated Asian and Pacific Islander individuals
Transcript
Today’s guest is Dara Yin of API Rise Los Angeles, Asian Pacific Islander Reentry and Inclusion through support and empowerment. API Rise is an extended family of formerly incarcerated detained Asian immigrants and refugees, Asian-Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders.
API Rise embraces immediate and chosen family members, friends, and supporters in the Los Angeles and Inland Empire regions.
API’s mission is to make freedom possible for the community of current and formerly incarcerated individuals, youth and families in high risk situations, allies, supporters, and their communities.
They do this through culturally sensitive, direct support, education, power building, organizing, and advocacy.
API Rise envisions true freedom and liberation for API communities living within a compassionate society that harnesses its community power.
Our guest from API Rise, Dara Yin, has been working with API Rise for about two years, working as a program specialist for a year and a half, working with those coming home from incarceration to help them reintegrate into society.
Dara is currently pursuing a master’s in learning, design, and technology at USC, which involves instructional design and curriculum development applied in education.
Welcome to the HC4US radio show, Dara. How are you?
I’m good. I’m good. Thank you for having me today.
I guess since you are a program specialist for API Rise, you kind of have to know what the organization is trying to do, obviously.
And hopefully, you can share a little bit about that work. But maybe can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself so they know who they’re listening to today?
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, obviously, Dara.
I grew up in California, Long Beach, to be specific. I am of Cambodian descent. My family came from Cambodia during the genocide, the end of the genocide. And I was born here.
Yeah, I committed a terrible crime at the age of 18. And I was incarcerated with the sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
After 20 years, I was commuted by Governor Gavin Newsom. And my sentence was stricken. And it was replaced with an 18 to life sentence.
Being that I already did 20 years in prison, I was able to go to the board of paroles to see if they would allow me to come home.
I was found suitable through that process in 2022 I’ve been home, and November 2022 to be specific. So yeah, that’s just a little bit about me.
Maybe people — be good for people to understand about — after all the time you’ve had to reflect on things, how would you describe what led you to becoming a gang member, coming from that community that you came in, with its trajectory, coming from war, and being refugees here. Can maybe give a little bit– because a lot of people probably don’t know much about Cambodia town. They don’t know stuff like Cambodia town is the largest– Cambodian population outside of Cambodia, is that right?
Yes, sir, it is. Well, like I said, during the genocide, or after the genocide, a lot of Cambodians fled. And they fled here to Long Beach, California, also Stockton and Lowell. But as you said, Long Beach is pretty much where a lot of us ended up. My mother specifically– we were actually sponsored in Florida, but moved to Long Beach because of the community. My mother spoke no English, couldn’t read or write, and she needed that kind of help.
And yeah, in Long Beach, it was a little–I mean, to us, it was normal. But after a lot of education, you understand it wasn’t, where we as Cambodians come into a minority-filled city, with Blacks and Mexicans, there was this automatic racial tension that happened.
I’ve just imagined 50,000 or 20,000 to 50,000 Cambodians placed in a city that had very little resources for minorities to begin with. And then you guys end up having a lot of tension amongst these minorities. Just because of the finite resources that are available, and especially the space, it’s not a lot of space, and not a lot of education. I’m sure that our fellow African-Americans and Mexican-Americans weren’t educated on Cambodians coming to Long Beach in droves.
They possibly could have felt some kind of way and felt like they had to defend themselves, and which happened.
And a lot of racial tension happened in the 90s, 80s, and 90s amongst the Cambodians, and specifically Mexican-Americans. And that led to a lot of gangs being cultivated for Cambodians in response to a lot of the violence. And I was eventually, as a youth, I grew up without a father. So the guys out on the block and in the parks were people that taught me everything I thought I needed to know as a man, to be a man. So I followed, too. I went along with it, and I learned things. And I committed myself to that lifestyle at such a young age that it was inevitable for us to eventually be destructive and hurt somebody. And that’s what happened.
You’ve been out for how long now?
I’ve been home for two years now. Been home for two years. That’s pretty good.
And then earlier offline, you were telling me you actually got a BA...
Yes. While incarcerated, I was on the road to transformation after about 10 years while incarcerated. And an opportunity when I was at Lancaster State Prison was that Cal State LA had offered a bachelor’s degree program at the prison. So I had already received an AA degree through correspondence colleges.
So it was almost like this perfect timing thing. And I jumped at the opportunity to actually go to college during being incarcerated. I thought that would never happen. I had life without parole, so I thought I was never coming home.
But being in that environment really opened me up, let me learn a lot about the world and everybody in it, and helped me recognize my faults in the way that I thought as well.
It’s kind of mind blowing that early you were talking about the conditions in Long Beach. And it’s almost like you have better access to college after you were incarcerated. That’s kind of ironic.
Yeah. I mean, that’s a– yeah. And it’s thankful to people. People made that happen. It wasn’t like a government program. It was a person visiting the jail and talking to men that have gotten their AA degrees and wanted to move forward in college, but couldn’t, couldn’t afford to, or whatnot. And then that person went and made it happen with the help of other people. So it tells you a lot that if people really wanted to help each other, you could. And people helped us while we were incarcerated.
That’s a great lesson to hold onto in these times right now for what we’re going through right now, huh?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Got people at the top, and they’re doing everything that’s the opposite of that. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, again, I hate to– because being incarcerated for 20 years, you watch TV a lot, and you read books. And so you have a lot of information. So watching the political atmosphere sway is not surprising to us because we’ve seen it. A lot of people have seen it, but they don’t remember.
They don’t remember. Some of our Democratic parties were in charge of certain situations that made certain things worse.
So for what’s going on right now, it’s almost like that pendulum that just swings back and forth. And now it’s the other sides turn or whatever sides turn to run the country, I guess.
Run or ruin. Run or ruin, right? Or both, right? Run into ruin, maybe, right?
But
Obviously, you had your own challenges reentering. But now that you’re working with a lot of others and trying to help them do the same, what do you think– obviously, the obvious ones that everybody runs into being the two that I like to focus on a lot is housing and health care.
And what has been some of the things that you’ve seen that are pretty prevalent for a lot of people that are trying to reinvent it? I mean, specifically to the API community, a lot of our members are coming home elderly, don’t speak English. And they are taking advantage of at these transitional houses. Like these transitional houses, some of them are free because they’re government grants and whatnot. But some of them will tell our people that they got to pay rent. And it’s not true.
And to something as big as that, to take somebody’s money that has barely been saving money since they’ve been in prison, $0.15 an hour.
And they only have the $600 to $800 they saved over 10, 15 years. And to have a transitional house say, oh, yeah, you know, you got to pay that to stay here. It’s ridiculous. So that for API communities is a huge thing. I mean, from that to obviously APIs, we eat different foods. We live a different way. And not a lot of those houses are accommodating to our culture.
And even shamed, actually, if a person brought in some durian to eat and opened it in the kitchen, and the whole house goes crazy because it smells a certain way. And then they’re told they can’t bring that anymore.
So it’s things like that that kind of demeans a person after already feeling ashamed from being incarcerated the last whatever amount of years. And it kind of makes people feel like not a part of society as a whole. So for us, we’re very intentional in making sure that our folks come home. And they know that they have a place to come. One of our big aspirations is a transitional house. So we can make it culturally informed and that our folks can feel comfortable doing the things that they need to do to feel comfortable to be themselves and be a support along the journey of reentry for them.
That’s beautiful. I would imagine that a lot of your work has to just do basic education about how to get access to different resources.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Some simple IDs just to getting a replacement social security guard. Some of many of our folks are dealing with undocumentation. Or even if they are legally citizens, some of them don’t have none of their papers. So finding ways to help them find those necessary items to be successful is very hard and it’s stressful for a lot of them. Because they initially want to come out and go straight to work and play catch up. You’re now in the, I guess, what they call the rat race. And in the race of life, when you get in and out, you’re working and you’re paying bills and you’re doing all these things. So they want to get into that, but then they’re kind of hampered because of those things. And that’s where we try our best to help as we can. I would imagine there’s a lot of discrimination in the workplace, not just for being Asian or a piece of gander or immigrant.
But being incarcerated is important. And the combo is kind of different too. Because unfortunately, sometimes when they talk about APIs, they talk about us in one form. They may have met a Chinese person, a well-off Chinese person. And they would think all of the Asians have gone through that same type of culture, a lifestyle in which it isn’t. So speaking from the Southeast Asian perspective, many of us come from war-torn countries. And then we find ourselves being incarcerated as well. So coming home, you get that double stigma where like, oh, you’re Asian. You shouldn’t be struggling like that. Why are you struggling like that? You come from a well-off family. But that’s not true. So it’s almost this double jeopardy, I guess, if you can call it, if I’m using the term properly. But you’re incarcerated. But then you’re also looked down upon because you’re Asian because you supposedly come from this great background or whatever. Crazy Rich Asian. Yeah, exactly. Right? There’s a movie. Or Model Minority is the– Yeah, Model Minority, Crazy Rich. There’s literally a movie that promotes that. This is how we are. And again, when that movie came out, I really didn’t relate. Not too much. I didn’t even– Not even close. You know, it’s crazy. The reality is the majority of us are working class people.
That’s why most of us came here originally. I mean, cheap labor was the original thing. And then later on, with US imperialism in Asia, bombing the hell out of the homelands, driving people– Absolutely. You know, on the survival. And so it’s terrible how the media really doesn’t tell the story of who we are. So that’s why I really appreciate you coming on the show because this is not a topic most people come across, I don’t think. I mean, and even sentencing for those that are API.
Like, there isn’t a research that I can find. But I know that if somebody did do it, like the average range of sentences per person, and when it comes to the API community, like most of the people that I knew that were API or that was incarcerated had long periods of sentences.
Like, I didn’t run into a lot of APIs that were going home in three months, going home in six months. Most of us had life sentences.
And we’re talking about most of the prisons that I was at.
What do you think that’s about? Is that a weird kind of racism on the–
Yeah, absolutely.
I believe our criminal justice system is biased in that way, too. They look through that lens as well. Like, you come from an Asian family, you shouldn’t then be messing up. So I’m going to just give you, since you had– you think– because they don’t– at the time when I was being sentenced, they didn’t ask about my historical factors, like my family or anything. They didn’t ask any of that.
So to me, you don’t even know, but then you sentenced me as a first-time offender to prison for life without parole.
I knew people.
So in my case, I was there. I am responsible.
I did not shoot the person, but I was there.
I know people that shot people and had less time than me.
That’s crazy. So if you can make that make sense, then–
I actually don’t. What is going on in the psychology of the people that are determining the sentencing to–
Well, I don’t even think it’s a humanistic issue. I think it’s a systemic issue, right? When you create laws that are biased, that says you have to do mandatory minimums, you have to sentence a certain way. You’re not really taking into account people’s– how they grew up, where they come from, things like that. And then, obviously, if you’re not having great representation when it comes to lawyers and stuff like that, your voice isn’t heard.
With somebody that has representation, paid representation, they have them do all kinds of things. They do psych eval. I didn’t even know that you could do a psych eval for you as a defendant. I learned about those things afterwards. Wow, I didn’t know you can do that. So the system is built a certain way. And so until that is helped, then I think we’ll consistently still see why African-Americans represent such a huge portion of the incarcerated population, but yet there’s a minority in it. Well,
I mean, with health care, I came out of prison a diabetic. So even coming home and having to like with Medi-Cal, then how do I get my insulin? I remember I think I went like a week without insulin. Wow. I just came home and it was just like I was then I had the insulin and didn’t know like didn’t even have the right education on it. Like I had the insulin sitting in my car in the summer.
So the insulin is like heated, so it’s not even working. So I learned like, oh, I can keep it cool. I got to keep it cool. Right. So like like just things like that. Like I was like, wow, I could have you know, it could have been bad. So
I just had a friend a couple of weeks ago that had a psychotic episode. And I didn’t know about that, that if your blood sugar goes really low.
Yeah. Or somebody with type two diabetes, you can go into you start losing your mind, you know, and he got in trouble. They dropped the charges when he assaulted somebody that he thought was stealing his car. You know, right. And they realized it was a medical condition. So luckily the charges were dropped. But I mean, he’s still trying to recover in the hospital now. You know, he had a stroke and stuff and very serious. And I we want to do actually a program on that at some point, because apparently diabetes is pretty high amongst a lot of Asian people.
Yeah, I am considered a post adult diabetic because I got it. I was diagnosed after Covid after I contracted Covid in prison.
Yeah, I dropped I dropped like 30 pounds in like two weeks. Wow. Like I almost I was a diabetic ketoacidosis where if I would have went into a coma, there was like a high chance of me passing away. So yeah, it’s insane.
So we were we were pretty excited to, you know, learn that API Rise endorsed CalCare, which was the effort last year was the second time that we tried a true single payer health care legislation in California. By that, I mean, they had a lot of bills before that under previous governors that got vetoed and stuff like.
But this bill was different because the previous bills had like a little loophole for the insurance companies to still be involved in extracting public funds into their own pockets. But CalCare version one, which is in twenty twenty two, eliminated that. And then it they built upon that to like flesh out the policy and a lot more details. And it’s an amazing bill. It’s like a vision of what we should already have. You know, wow. It’s actually better than Bernie Sanders bill in the Senate right now.
Because, you know, and this is like something people don’t understand. Why is it better? Because it was written by a union of caregivers in the health care service facilities, nurses that are in contact with people like yourself, you know, and people from the community you lived in. And they have that perspective about what the needs are. And so the bill has a lot of stuff on like.
Addressing historical health care, inequality, disparities and stuff.
Amazing.
So we were pretty excited when A.P. Rise endorsed it. But do you have any like opinion about why A.P. Rise did that and the relationship to the stuff that you’re going through?
Yeah. Yeah, I think I think A.P. Rise endorsed it because of like a lot of our experiences, a lot of us are. Most of us are formerly incarcerated. So we have dealt with the health care system while incarcerated. And we know how demeaning it can be and how sometimes like how we heal. You know, a lot of us have different like different ways of healing because of our cultures and stuff like that.
You know, you know, coming from that experience. I mean, how could we not get behind that? You know, I mean, and I know sometimes, you know, like the A.P. Eye community can be a little split when it comes to those that are formerly incarcerated, because that kind of is a thing as well. But, you know, for us, we want to always be able to stand with our folks and, you know, make sure that, you know, we’re represented and support those that are doing great work like yourself and the bill.
So, so maybe explain to people some of the particularities of the kind of activities that you help lead, you know, with API Rise and…
Yeah, absolutely. So for me, I am in charge of the prison and reach program where we stay in contact with formerly currently incarcerated folks. We have a database about six hundred plus of folks that we’re in constant contact with that are incarcerated. We send them newsletters, we send them resources, support letters for the board or court. We also try to help with ICE detainees.
And then also, again, like we’re me, Mike and Billy, we do a lot of our care member support work where we actually are working one on one with a lot of the folks that are coming home that are A.P. Eye.
And we help others to not just A.P. Eye, but like our intentionality is A.P. Eye. But yeah, so we do a lot of like reentry work when it comes to that. We do a lot of educational workshops as well.
You know, we we go do our workshops with other organizations in collaboration. So yeah, that’s that’s kind of like the guess of what I do every day.
So fantastic. But what’s your take on…I thought it was horrible that those firefighters were risking their lives, you know, out there. They didn’t even give a mass. I got reports from the front lines. They were out there breathing that deadly smoke. They didn’t even have masks for them.
That’s crazy. I mean, I just like
so what’s your take on this whole, you know, school to prison pipeline? Some people are saying, you know, that with the privatization of incarceration, that a lot of the stuff that’s going down is basically just a cover for a new slave labor industry.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that’s kind of like it’s new to the public now, but like that’s that’s been happening. Like they create prisons off of, you know, seventh grade statistics.
They know people are going to go to prison and they can find out through that kind of research. And that tells me that, you know, we’re not investing into our education system and we’re not diversifying our education system. Our education system is westernized. We’re not from the westernized hemisphere. Right. So, you know, a lot of that stuff don’t relate to us or we don’t feel seen. So if you’re not feeling seen at school, why would you listen?
Why would you listen to people? You know, like if my people aren’t represented or the techniques you’re telling my you’re telling me my mother’s techniques are witchcraft.
I mean, I’m I’m not sick anymore. She helped me. Right. So a lot of the times I think we’re not represented in that way. So, you know, I can see I can see that people can look at it that way, too, because, you know, I believe it’s real. I believe why is it that, you know, correctional officers get paid one hundred thousand dollars a year, but our teachers struggle to get paid 40 grand. It doesn’t make sense. You pay a correctional officer a hundred grand a year to watch adult people to respond to them, not not stop anything. They don’t stop anything. They respond to it. Right. But our teachers can prevent. They are with our kids 200 days a year.
And you pay them 50 grand a year. It doesn’t make sense.
All of the supplies that go into prisons, the jumpsuits and everything, those are often private companies.
Yeah, it comes like the soap. Right. Like all of that. All of those things come from there and we’re making it. We’re making all of it. So, you know, and it’s I mean, again, it’s not just California. California may have 20 something prisons, but imagine all the other states in combination with those private contracts. Right. I think who was it the guy from? Well, yeah, Bob Barker. Bob Barker is literally one of the biggest privatizations when it comes to that. Right. Like from shoes to, you know, soap, yeah, machines, all that. So, you know, I mean, they learned a way. They found a way to make money off of it, you know. And then once they knew that they knew that they had to make sure they can funnel more people in. And the only way to do that is to make the laws more discriminatory, to make the schools worse when you start redlining and zoning certain certain districts. Right.
And even the alumni system. Right. Alumni supports the schools. Obviously, people in the hood don’t got money to be given back to their schools. But these rich areas, they have alumni. They can do that. They can go get every whatever they need for their school. But the schools in here can’t. So they’re steadily playing catch up.
So, you know, I don’t know, I think it’s it’s it’s so many different arms that lead to, you know, keeping, you know, folks separated, unempowered and so that, you know, it can feed that, you know, that one percent. That’s the code part is feeding just the one percent. Right. So.
It’s crazy. You got Elon Musk talking about, you know, getting rid of this program and getting rid of that program. He’s getting more money than anybody from the government. You know, I mean, the government’s finance, all of his stuff. I mean, there’s the biggest contract for that space X program. That thing wouldn’t exist without our money financing it. Right. Right. Really, the biggest grifter of all, you know. You know, and now he’s taken over parts of government and ruining people’s lives. I mean, you know, it’s it’s it’s nuts.
How did you guys process the what happened in California with the last election with that proposition about getting rid of slavery out of the state constitution?
And oh, my God, I know the the person that wrote that was actually a colleague of mine, a school peer of mine while in Lancaster.
Wow. Yeah. Samuel Samuel Brown, he was the one that had first penned it and then it got picked up. But yeah, it was it was sad and it was saddening, actually, because like you would have thought like.
California would be ready for something like that. Right. And.
They were not.
They were not.
So I think we’re kind of in a period of really waking up about what California really is. You know, this has a Democratic Party, supermajority, both houses and the governor, a governor who was elected largely on being a pro single payer candidate. Right. They all know that all of us out here want single payer. We all want health care reform. They all know that. Right. Yeah. I mean, a CEO gets off. Right. And. they thought everybody was going to be outraged at a murder and they found that holy moly, a bipartisan majority across the country. I mean, it isn’t even close, right? They all understand what the problem is with the health care insurance industry. And I think they all the politicians know that you can’t go out there and not be mouthing off that you support health care reform. Right. So, you know, they get elected. But once they get in there and we’ve got a really good bill in front of their face, what do they do? They don’t even let it out of committee.
You know, so I think in the same way with the…trying to get the Constitution fixed, so it doesn’t codify slavery for California to basically vote to continue slavery, I think, boy, what a message is that? Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s from the biggest blue state of them all. Yeah, it was this year’s I ain’t gonna lie. This year’s like political whole experience was very, very bad. Like it was almost on every level. I can’t even I can’t even like really say anything positive about the what happened this this last November. So, yeah, like you said, the pendulum swinging.
What are your thoughts? Or like what kind of gets you through the day, you know, when you wake up and realize this mess we’re getting through and it’s so much you can’t even keep track of it. It’s so much crazy. But what do you go back to to get you through the day and keep going forward?
You know, working with people, you know, like working with the members coming home, actually being like in the field with them, like watching them succeed, watching them get it, watching them like a feeling that’s pretty cool is that we just know like a person is not going back to jail or he’s not going to harm somebody. Like you can really feel it, you know, like you can really feel the turn, you know.
I also work with kids as well. So that one’s a little bit harder, but it’s it’s awesome when when when you do see them like make this drastic change. And we’re talking like gang member youth that come straight out the camps, you know, so and seeing them like listen and use what you’re showing them to to make better decisions. And so, yeah, I think that’s that’s that’s that those are the things that keep me kind of going in in the field, you know, so…
It’s kind of funny. You can almost like look at what they’re doing of destroying lives and flip it around, you know, instead of like tearing apart families, tearing apart communities. Maybe what we need to do is focus on building community. Exactly. And I think that’s the issue. I think that’s where the gray area is, is maybe in their thinking, they’re rebuilding their community.
Right. I think that’s the disconnect right now. Like it’s either there because it’s either they’re just really, really like in for it just for themselves or some people actually. I mean, Rome was built on good intentions, right? So some people, you know, think they’re doing the right thing at the moment and can’t see it no other way. So I think try to find a way to kind of see each other. Now, I think it’s so bad for left or right. Like we don’t even talk, you know, like we won’t talk. We won’t even share space anymore. So, you know,
I think that’s when it’s dangerous. So yeah, a lot of work to do. OK, man. Well, I’ve had you here long enough. I’ll let you go. I really
How can people kind of like keep in touch with the work that you’re doing and maybe support what API Rise is doing?
Yeah, please check into our website, API-Rise.org. We have our calendar on there with our different events that we’re having. We have a monthly gatherings every month, once a month for just to be a community. We have different themes, depending on months or what’s going on in our communities during that time.
You know, we have volunteer events next week. We’re doing a produce distribution, volunteer produce distribution for folks that are in the transitional homes. But anybody that needs any kind of the produce that we have can come and get it here at our office. And we have three of those scheduled in the next coming months.
So yeah, so please just check into our API-Rise.org. Check our calendar and, you know, just email email us. And, you know, if you want to volunteer, we’re always looking for volunteers.
So that’s kind of it, yeah.
It’s been great to have you on the show. We’re running out of time and really a pleasure to meet you. And hopefully come by one of the events we can talk more.
Yes, please, please. We have an event this Friday if you’re if you’re
I think I’m tied of Friday, but the next time for sure.
Yeah. OK, take care.
We’ll talk soon.
All right.
Bye.
OK, thank you.
