--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Good morning. It's Friday, March 5th. I'm Duarte Giraldino. And I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A 61-year-old Filipino-American woman was at a New York subway station in February when someone slashed her face. After the incident, she says nobody came, nobody helped, nobody made a video.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: As CNN reports, she's just one of a growing number of people of Asian descent living in the U.S. who've been the target of hate crimes since the start of the pandemic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That feeling of having no one acknowledge the violence against you, it's like being invisible. That's what Tung Nguyen told CNN. He's the director of the Asian American Research Center on Health.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And Wynn said this is what happens to Asians in this country. They're either treated as the model minority or treated like outsiders. And both have the same effect, an invisibility cloak.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He says it's easier to hurt someone when they're invisible. According to the California State University's Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, there were 122 incidents of anti-Asian American hate crimes in major cities in 2020.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: That's an increase of almost 150% over the previous year. To put those numbers in context, Connie Wan says we have to go back much farther than the pandemic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She writes for Elle magazine about the often overlooked history of anti-Asian sentiment in America. There's the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, mob attacks against Filipino farm workers in the 1930s, Japanese internment camps in the 1940s.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Wan writes these atrocities endured by Asian Americans have been mostly left out of our history books. She recounts how she only learned in college about the Philippine War when Filipinos were characterized as savages.
--:-- Shamita Basu: One also writes, the stereotype of Asian Americans being the model minority, a group that's largely economically successful, is overly simplistic. It ignores how many people of Asian descent in this country live below the poverty line, and the millions of undocumented workers were mostly left out of the narrative.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Her point is Asian Americans and their history are largely forgotten in this country. And now, finally, the stories of these attacks on this community are starting to get some attention.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In this piece, one writes about how her aunt came home from the grocery store upset one day. She'd been chased out of the store by another shopper who accused her of carrying COVID-19.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One's uncle then suggested dyeing their hair blonde. Maybe that would help spare them from harassment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a labor fight going on right now that comes right to your doorstep. Before you get one of those brown cardboard boxes from Amazon, a real person in a warehouse grabbed the things you ordered and boxed them up.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Right now in Alabama, Amazon workers in one of those giant fulfillment centers are deciding whether to form a union.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is one of the highest profile union votes in a long time, and it's getting a lot of coverage. Bloomberg News went to the town and spoke with workers on all sides of this debate.
--:-- [Audio clip of Bloomberg News]
--:-- Shamita Basu: One worker says that she's a mother of five and she's hoping to become a manager at the warehouse. But she worried the union could derail those plans.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: She told Bloomberg every day when she comes into work she avoids making eye contact with all the union activists who are in the parking lot.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Pro workers say Amazon expects them to work faster and faster, filling more and more of those brown boxes, especially during the pandemic.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One woman says, it feels like being on a sinking ship. No matter how many holes she plugs, there's always more the next day.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She eventually quit. Her story is a reminder. This isn't a simple dispute over pay.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Some workers say a union would help them have a greater voice as they demand better working conditions, like more breaks from the fast-paced physical labor.
--:-- Shamita Basu: When Amazon chose to invest in this majority Black community, it was a lifeline. The entire town had been struggling since the 70s when manufacturing jobs dried up.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The jobs Amazon offered had good benefits and paid more than twice the minimum wage. $15 an hour goes really far in Bessemer, Alabama.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some people in town worry about what would happen if workers unionize and Amazon or other companies decide to create jobs somewhere else.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The workers have until the end of this month to vote on forming a union. What they decide could have major implications for Amazon, the company, and its employees across America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, the people who spring into action whenever you click buy.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Last summer, Maine had been keeping the pandemic under control fairly well. Locals were hoping the tourist season would bring more dollars to small business owners who had been hurting because of lockdowns.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But then a wedding turned into a super spreader event. Elle magazine reports on a wedding that would be linked to 177 infections, seven deaths, and spark big questions about who should be held accountable for the spread of the virus.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Some precautions were taken at this wedding. There were staffers there checking to make sure no one had a high temperature. The number of guests were limited, and tables at the reception were spaced six feet apart.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But by the time the first attendee tested positive for COVID six days after the wedding, an outbreak had already started to spread across the state.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: A week after that, half the guests tested positive. One guest worked at a school and went to work despite a cough. Other staff members got sick.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The entire school system had to delay opening by two weeks. Another guest worked at a correctional facility. 82 people there got the virus.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: One guest went home and infected their parent, who infected another relative, who worked at an assistant living facility. Elle reports 40 people at that assistant living facility got the virus.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Six of them died. Elle says now, seven months later, this main town is asking who should be held responsible? The couple? The church that hosted the ceremony?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So far, both of them seem to be off the hook for any liability. The owners of the restaurant that hosted the reception said they followed all state guidelines that day.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But they say they wound up briefly losing their license, and their reputation has been destroyed locally because of the outbreak.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The way they put it, they desperately needed the money, and they couldn't afford to turn down the business.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now the restaurant and the assisted living facility are the targets of lawsuits from grieving family members.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories, including the story we were just talking about about the wedding in Maine from Elle magazine.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We'll talk with you again on Monday.
