• Pacific Islanders—whose homelands have been ravaged by the effects of nuclear waste and rising sea levels for decades—have said for years that they shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of a climate crisis caused by wealthier countries.

• The agreement is “a clear result from the pressure from the most impacted nations and the civil society,” Joseph Zikulu, the regional director of climate justice nonprofit 350.org Pacific, said in a statement. “We will have a story to tell. Of our anger and rage at the failure of some countries to step up but also of the new and strengthened connections we have made.”

• Marshall Islands climate envoy Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner also called the deal a win for Pacific nations but emphasized that this is just the beginning. “We are also not doing enough to reduce the loss and damage that will affect us in the future,” she said in the summit’s closing plenary. “We must phase out fossil fuels and we must do so now.”

SF supervisors greenlight plan to establish Pacific Islander cultural district

• Cultural districts are part of a citywide effort to preserve and promote historically marginalized communities through formal recognition and funding to help support businesses, nonprofits, and community arts organizations. Pacific Islanders organized a campaign for their own cultural district after seeing its success for the Latino community in the Mission.

• The new district will sit in Visitacion Valley and Sunnydale, two neighborhoods that Pacific Islanders have called home since the early 1900s. 

• The flow of PI migration to California started in the late 1800s, largely due to colonization, militarization, and displacement. The 1900s saw a significant influx of Pacific Islanders to San Francisco as the U.S. recruited them to serve in the military during World War II. Later, tens of thousands of migrants from Samoa and Tonga relocated to the city for job opportunities and helped build structures like the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and Mormon temples.

• Today, Native Hawaiians are the largest PI ethnic subgroup in the Bay Area at 22.8%, followed by Samoans at 19.4% and Tongans at 18%, according to the board of supervisors.

• Pacific Islanders experience poverty at disproportionately higher levels compared to other ethnic communities in San Francisco. In 2020, 29% of the city’s Pacific Islander population lived below the federal poverty level, compared to 14% of the Asian population and 13% of the total population, according to the San Francisco Regional Pacific Islander Taskforce. 

• PI communities also face additional challenges including language barriers, lack of government aid, and racial profiling. The new cultural district could help address these and other inequities, such as health care access, gun violence, and chronic truancy. 

• “My hope is San Francisco and other cities Pacific Islanders call home will continue to support our communities beyond symbolic acts … by way of increased funding, improved policy measures, systemic transformations, and tangible community support,” Estella Owoimaha-Church, executive director of the advocacy group Empowering Pacific Islander Communities, said in a statement to The Yappie. 

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles will construct a memorial to commemorate the 18 people who were fatally shot or hanged in an 1871 massacre targeting Chinese immigrants.

• The history: In 1871, a mob of around 500 white and Hispanic people tore through the city in one of the worst mass lynchings in U.S. history. The attack wiped out roughly 10% of the city’s Asian American population at the time. 

• “This memorial is important because it allows us to unfold and point to a segment of U.S. history, of L.A. history, that’s been buried for 150 years,” Gay Yuen, who chairs the Friends of the Chinese American Museum Board of Directors, told The Los Angeles Times’ Gregory Yee.

• A larger movement: Organizers with the Eureka Chinatown Project are also demanding their town acknowledge its past, Hailey Branson-Potts of The Mercury News reports. 

• At one point, the town expelled about 300 Chinese residents, shipping them off to nearby San Francisco, in a purge that was carried out in other California towns and hailed by white people.

PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia 76ers are stepping up efforts to convince the city’s Chinatown to agree to its proposal for a new sports arena, Joseph DiStefano of The Philadelphia Inquirer writes. The proposed indoor arena would be located just two blocks from Chinatown’s Friendship Gate.

• The tightly-knit community has been resisting these kinds of large-scale developments for decades. “They are making a decision about the future of our community … They think it’s easy to sell [us],” Wei Chen, civic engagement director of the advocacy group Asian Americans United, told University of Pennsylvania’s 34th Street Magazine last month.

• Critics warn that Philadelphia’s Chinatown could face a similar fate as D.C.’s, where the Capital One Arena, which opened in 1997, pushed out the Chinese community and their businesses, leaving only traces of the once-thriving district today.

Our remaining midterm race calls: Incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel (R) defeated Taiwanese American rival Jay Chen (D) in California’s 45th congressional district following a controversial race in which congressional leaders condemned Steel for using “red-baiting” tactics, The Yappie’s Cindy Xie reports.

• Republican Lanhee Chen did not fare as well, conceding defeat to Democrat Malia Cohen last week in the race to become California’s next state controller. The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Chen would have been the first Republican elected to statewide office since 2006, The Yappie’s Samson Zhang writes.

Preterm births—defined as birth before 37 weeks of pregnancy—among AAPIs jumped by 8% in 2021, up from 8.7% in 2020 to 9.5% in 2021, according to a report by the maternal and infant health nonprofit March of Dimes. It’s the largest increase among all racial and ethnic groups in 2021 even though babies born to AAPI mothers typically experience the lowest rate of preterm births.

• Worth noting: Infants born to Black and Native American mothers are 62% more likely to be born preterm than those born to white mothers, per the report.