acesfull86
10-26-2023, 10:19 AM
https://public.substack.com/p/california-spent-110m-to-stop-asian
Two years ago, amid a national wave of violent crimes against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, the state of California awarded $110 million over 3 years to non-profit organizations to provide services to victims and to develop programs to prevent anti-Asian hate crimes. “In response to the visible rise in anti-Asian hate, both locally and nationally,” the California Department of Social Services wrote on the program’s website, the state legislature provided those funds “to address the rise in hate against Asian and Pacific Islander Californians.”
What was that money spent on? Through a public records request, Public recently obtained grant applications from close to 50 grantees in the San Francisco Bay Area region, through two rounds of funding. The programs proposed by most of these groups, which typically received hundreds of thousands of dollars each, have little obvious connection to the goal of protecting Asians from violent attacks.
Collectively, the applications provide a glimpse into how much of the activist non-profit sector sustains itself by exploiting high-profile crises to raise funds that are then diverted into barely related or entirely unrelated causes. It also indicates how little the actual victims of those crises — in this case, Asian hate crime victims — actually benefit from these ballyhooed government spending sprees, which keep non-profit workers employed but do little for the communities they purport to serve.
“I have questions about the effectiveness of this program,” Carl Chan, a leader in Oakland’s Chinatown community who was once the victim of an anti-Asian assault, told Public. “Some of the organizations are getting millions of dollars to ‘stop AAPI hate,’ but it doesn’t look like they’re doing anything to actually stop it. That money isn’t going where it was supposed to.”
…
But the majority of the groups that received funding proposed programs that have little obvious direct impact on the lives of Asian hate crime victims or potential victims.
…
Six groups proposed programs to protect LGBT people but made no mention of Asians. One of those groups, the Positive Resource Center, received $620,000 to produce “an anti-racism and anti-hate film that highlights the experiences of Black transgender folx through interviews.” Another worked on behalf of Latino LGBT immigrants. Yet another puts up posters against “hate,” without specification of any group in particular.
…
It isn’t even clear that the organizations that purport to provide meaningful services to Asians are actually fulfilling those roles. In February, Anthony Morales, a Filipino-American private investigator whose work extracting minors from sex slavery we’ve reported on at Public, called and emailed 17 of the Bay Area groups that received funding, posing as the nephew of an elderly Asian woman who was violently attacked. Only three of them offered any specific service. One was a non-profit law firm that offered to do an intake session. Another provided counseling services, but never called back as they promised they would. The third also offered counseling and made an earnest effort to serve the victim.
The rest either did not return Morales’ calls or emails, referred him to another organization, or told him they had no help to offer.
——————
Whole article is worth a read.
This encapsulates so much of what is wrong with our politics:
- virtue signaling over effectiveness
- politicians throwing massive numbers at a problem (real or imagined) without any strategy (because the photo op is all that truly matters)
- embarrassing lack of accountability about how tax dollars are spent
- lack of curiosity amongst folks when it comes to whether govt programs achieve their stated ends (intentions >>> results)
- the encouragement and enabling of rent seeking grifters
- the encouragement and enabling of poisonous identity politics
Really has it all.
Two years ago, amid a national wave of violent crimes against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, the state of California awarded $110 million over 3 years to non-profit organizations to provide services to victims and to develop programs to prevent anti-Asian hate crimes. “In response to the visible rise in anti-Asian hate, both locally and nationally,” the California Department of Social Services wrote on the program’s website, the state legislature provided those funds “to address the rise in hate against Asian and Pacific Islander Californians.”
What was that money spent on? Through a public records request, Public recently obtained grant applications from close to 50 grantees in the San Francisco Bay Area region, through two rounds of funding. The programs proposed by most of these groups, which typically received hundreds of thousands of dollars each, have little obvious connection to the goal of protecting Asians from violent attacks.
Collectively, the applications provide a glimpse into how much of the activist non-profit sector sustains itself by exploiting high-profile crises to raise funds that are then diverted into barely related or entirely unrelated causes. It also indicates how little the actual victims of those crises — in this case, Asian hate crime victims — actually benefit from these ballyhooed government spending sprees, which keep non-profit workers employed but do little for the communities they purport to serve.
“I have questions about the effectiveness of this program,” Carl Chan, a leader in Oakland’s Chinatown community who was once the victim of an anti-Asian assault, told Public. “Some of the organizations are getting millions of dollars to ‘stop AAPI hate,’ but it doesn’t look like they’re doing anything to actually stop it. That money isn’t going where it was supposed to.”
…
But the majority of the groups that received funding proposed programs that have little obvious direct impact on the lives of Asian hate crime victims or potential victims.
…
Six groups proposed programs to protect LGBT people but made no mention of Asians. One of those groups, the Positive Resource Center, received $620,000 to produce “an anti-racism and anti-hate film that highlights the experiences of Black transgender folx through interviews.” Another worked on behalf of Latino LGBT immigrants. Yet another puts up posters against “hate,” without specification of any group in particular.
…
It isn’t even clear that the organizations that purport to provide meaningful services to Asians are actually fulfilling those roles. In February, Anthony Morales, a Filipino-American private investigator whose work extracting minors from sex slavery we’ve reported on at Public, called and emailed 17 of the Bay Area groups that received funding, posing as the nephew of an elderly Asian woman who was violently attacked. Only three of them offered any specific service. One was a non-profit law firm that offered to do an intake session. Another provided counseling services, but never called back as they promised they would. The third also offered counseling and made an earnest effort to serve the victim.
The rest either did not return Morales’ calls or emails, referred him to another organization, or told him they had no help to offer.
——————
Whole article is worth a read.
This encapsulates so much of what is wrong with our politics:
- virtue signaling over effectiveness
- politicians throwing massive numbers at a problem (real or imagined) without any strategy (because the photo op is all that truly matters)
- embarrassing lack of accountability about how tax dollars are spent
- lack of curiosity amongst folks when it comes to whether govt programs achieve their stated ends (intentions >>> results)
- the encouragement and enabling of rent seeking grifters
- the encouragement and enabling of poisonous identity politics
Really has it all.