By Kyung Lah : msn – excerpt

Allene Jue used to vote in a simple, rapid manner – scan the names on the ballot and pick the Asian sounding names.

That was before 2020.

“Something turned on during the pandemic and lit a fire,” said Jue, a Chinese American mother of two girls, ages 3 and 5, living on the west side of San Francisco. Throughout the pandemic, Jue watched as violent hate crimes against Asian Americans brought fear to the community with not enough response from local law enforcement or prosecutors. As the school closures wore on and on in California, Jue saw her local school board discuss progressive policy issues like renaming schools ahead of focusing on simply returning students to the classroom…

Jue, who generally considers herself a Democrat, recalled her anger at liberal local politicians.

“They care about policies that don’t really help someone who just lives in the city and just want to be safe, who wants their kids to be educated well,” she said. “They forgot the core problems for regular people. I wanted to do something to try to change and take that power back. It was fear and frustration, a lot of frustration, that I turned into action.”…

Progressive backlash

Supervisor Joel Engardio, a gay married man who by most national standards is a liberal, describes himself as a moderate in San Francisco. And he is quick to criticize the word “progressive.”…

Erosion among Asian and Latino voters, said Kanishka Cheng of grassroots community building organization Together SF, is explained by Democrats forgetting the core values for immigrant communities…(more)