Now, the three have parlayed their Stop Asian Hate activist identity and pandemic-era community work into a particular brand of politics.
The three founders of Dear Community, left to right: Amy Lee, Forrest Liu, and Jade Tu. Illustration by Xueer Lu.They found one another during the worst of the pandemic, pitching in to support elders and businesses in Chinatown as that community was assailed for the spread of Covid-19. New to activism, the three — Jade Tu, Forrest Liu, and Amy Lee — started safety patrols in the neighborhood and organized dinners at restaurants struggling to survive.
Jennifer Li, a Chinese-American community activist, felt the group had little to show for its high profile. “They started off with good intentions,” she said. “But they maybe have not done the self-reflection or have the self-awareness to admit to themselves that they gained a lot of recognition for relatively little to no work for the actual community.”
Liu, Tu and Lee declined repeated interview attempts, so this story relies on accounts from over 20 sources familiar with the Asian community in San Francisco, some of whom asked for anonymity. The three turned their regular hangouts after safety patrols into a flagship program, Chinatown Fridays, where they organized dinners in Chinatown restaurants to support small businesses. Such events also take place in the Sunset, the Richmond and other Asian neighborhoods. To date,At a typical Dear Community event on a recent Saturday night, dozens of people in baggy T-shirts, most of them in their 20s and about half of them Asian, crammed into Red’s Place,.
Tu, who was working the front desk at a dentistry office in 2021, crossed paths with Jung in October of that year when she began as a program manager at the San Francisco Association of Realtors, according to her LinkedIn profile. The group’s current president William Brega, 23, also came from TogetherSF, where he acted as an associate program manager between April 2022 to June 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. Onwith District 11 candidate Michael Lai, who’s endorsed by Jung, TogetherSF Action, Grow SF, YIMBY Action and former presidential candidate Yang. . “She knows who you need if you want to win, if you want to succeed in San Francisco. She knows you need to reach out to seek approval from.
At a Dear Community event, dozens of people cram into Red’s Place and compete for the best K-Pop karaoke singer of the night, singing with abandon and off-key. Photo by Yujie Zhou, July 27, 2024.People close to Dear Community speak highly of its events, which generally gather young community-minded Asians to patronize Asian small businesses or simply provide a refuge for folks to build bonds with one another over boba tea, karaoke or matcha.
Some, however, see the group as exploitative. But the work has also offered an answer to the reality of businesses that suffered property crimes. It just so happens that it is also compatible with the tough-on-crime candidates that Dear Community’s founders are backing.
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