Commentary
COMMENTARY: We must approach ending Alzheimer’s with the urgency it deserves
LOS ANGELES SENTINEL — This week, thousands of researchers, scientists, clinicians, advocates, and concerned Angelenos convened at the Los Angeles Convention Center to discuss one of the most urgent health crises of our time: eradicating Alzheimer’s disease and all forms of dementia.
By Congresswoman Maxine Waters
This week, thousands of researchers, scientists, clinicians, advocates, and concerned Angelenos convened at the Los Angeles Convention Center to discuss one of the most urgent health crises of our time: eradicating Alzheimer’s disease and all forms of dementia.
Each year, the Annual Alzheimer’s International Conference (AAIC), serves as the world’s largest week-long summit that is dedicated to discussing the latest scientific breakthroughs and innovation that will improve our ability to detect, treat, and ultimately, find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. As I walked the halls of the AAIC, I was so pleased to learn about scientific advancements, such as the possibility of a new test to determine an individual’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s and new research suggesting that healthy lifestyle choices – including a healthy diet, exercise, and cognitive stimulation – can significantly reduce the risk of dementia. These breakthroughs will save lives and help us advance our mission of stopping Alzheimer’s disease in its dangerous tracks.
As the Co-Chair of the bipartisan Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease, I have been engaged in this fight for many years and know all too well how devastating this disease can be for patients, families, and caregivers. There is currently no effective treatment, no means of prevention, and no method for slowing the progression of the Alzheimer’s disease, which affects 670,000 people over the age of 65 in California alone.[1] More than 5.6 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, and by the year 2050 that number will have more than doubled.[2]
I led a years-long effort in the House to create the first ever Alzheimer’s semipostal fundraising stamp, which was formally accepted by the U.S. Postal Service in November 2017. The stamp has already raised $915,000 for Alzheimer’s, and more than 6.7 million stamps have been sold.[3] I am also proud to have joined with my colleagues to increase funding for Alzheimer’s research at the National Institutes of Health to a historic total of $2.3 billion in fiscal year 2019. Moreover, when I called for an additional $350 million in 2020, 129 of my congressional colleagues, representing both political parties, supported my request. While meeting with scientists at the AAIC, I was especially gratified to see that the increases in research funding for which I have fought so hard are being put to good use.
However, research – while critical – is not enough. As we search for a cure for Alzheimer’s, we must simultaneously pursue commonsense measures that support caregivers and ensure that patients have access to the resources and funding they need to fight this tragic disease.
For the past decade, I have also led efforts in Congress to expand funding for the Missing Alzheimer’s Patient Alert Program, which helps local law enforcement officials find persons with Alzheimer’s who wander and reunite them with their families. Congress also passed the BOLD Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act, which provides for the development of a robust Alzheimer’s public health infrastructure across the country by establishing Alzheimer’s Centers of Excellence. The BOLD Act’s interventions will support early detection and diagnosis, reduce the risk of hospitalizations and cognitive decline, support caregivers, and reduce health disparities – but only if the law is fully funded – and Congress has yet to provide the funding.
Confronting the many challenges of Alzheimer’s disease requires a comprehensive approach. I am pleased that Congress is beginning to take this issue seriously, but it is past time for all legislative bodies, at the state, local, and federal level, to join in this fight. As a country and a global society, we must approach Alzheimer’s disease with the urgency it deserves. Our futures and those of our loved ones are depending upon it.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee and Co-Chair of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease
The article was originally published online by the Southern California News Group
This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Sentinel.
Activism
Chauvin Trial Shows Need for Broad Focus on Systemic Racism
Officer’s Conviction Necessary but Not Sufficient, Greenlining Institute Says
Activism
When I See George Floyd, I See an Asian American
A modern-day lynching is specific and symbolic all at once. If you know Asian American history, then you know Asians in California, Chinese, and Filipino, were lynched in America.
You watching the trial of the now ex-Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin, the person I call the “knee man?”
That’s what he was. Chauvin’s on trial for the murder of George Floyd, but I’m wondering how the defense is going to play this. Say that Chauvin’s knee acted independently?
The evidence is piling up. In Monday’s testimony, no less than the Minneapolis Chief of Police Medaria Arradondo said that Chauvin’s actions were in violation of “our principles and values that we have.”
In other words, the placing of the knee to the neck of Floyd, who was face down with hands cuffed behind his back, was “in no way, shape or form part of police policy or training.”
If you’re a juror and hear the chief come down on Chauvin, how can you possibly not find the officer guilty?
The defense has said it will focus on Floyd’s fentanyl drug use, presumably to link that as the real cause of death. But the prosecution on Monday brought out Dr. Bradford Langenfield, the Emergency Room doc who pronounced Floyd dead. He noted the length of time before Floyd got any breathing aid, and said Floyd’s death was more likely caused by asphyxia, or a lack of oxygen.
From the drugs or the knee?
The defense will claim it wasn’t the knee, which at times was also on Floyd’s shoulder. Is that enough reasonable doubt?
Remember it was when Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s neck, not when he was walking around with drugs in his system, when Floyd said, “I can’t breathe.”
So far, the trial’s most compelling moment came when Darnella Frazier, the teenager who took the cell phone video we all have seen, recalled her trauma at witnessing of Floyd’s death.
“When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles because they are all Black. I have a Black brother, I have Black friends. And I look at that and I look at how that could have been one of them,” Frazier said. “It’s been nights, I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more. And not physically interacting.”
Van Jones on CNN said Frazier had witnessed a lynching.
“When you have a lynching, which is what this was,” said Jones, “you aren’t just torturing the individual who you’re strangling to death, you’re torturing the whole community.”
A modern-day lynching is specific and symbolic all at once. If you know Asian American history, then you know Asians in California, Chinese, and Filipino, were lynched in America.
As my friend Ishmael Reed told me on my amok.com vlog, don’t let the media play “divide and conquer.” This isn’t a Black vs. Asian thing.
All BIPOC are fighting a common foe. All people of color have been under someone’s knee at some time in America. It’s our common ground, our shared past in America’s racist history.
That’s why to paraphrase Darnella Frazier, when I see George Floyd, I see an Asian American. And so should you.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning Bay Area veteran journalist and commentator. See his vlog at www.amok.com
I’m all for recycling. The good kind. Paper. Plastics. Just not the hate.
But what do we have with us in Atlanta?
It’s Vincent Chin, you know the Asian American killed in Detroit in 1982 with a baseball bat by
a white auto worker angry at Japanese imports taking over the market.
But Chin was Chinese, not Japanese. Details.
That’s why I say Atlanta was Vincent Chin with the names changed.
Soon Chung Park, 74, worked at Gold spa.
Hyun Jung Grant, 51, the single mother who worked at Gold Spa to support herself and her two
sons.
Suncha Kim, 69, a Gold Spa worker.
Yong Ae Yue, 63, a worker at the Aromatherapy Spa.
Xiaojie Tan, 49, the owner of Young’s Asian Massage.
Daoyou Feng, 44, an employee at Young’s Asian Massage.
Those six names strike the discordant history of the hateful treatment of Asian Americans in this
country, from the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 19th Century to today.
Asian Americans know hate and racism from their first day in America.
President Joe Biden recognized it. And now suddenly, Biden has become one of the most
pro-Asian American presidents the U.S. has seen since Reagan signed the bill giving Japanese
Americans redress.
Think about that. Did either of the Bushes, Clinton, or even Obama do anything that addressed
Asian American existential angst like Biden?
One thing for sure, the last president was the absolute worst. He slurred Asian Americans and
made us targets.
In contrast, Biden has shined a light on us and made us visible.
He selected Vice President Kamala Harris, who is half South Asian of Indian descent.
As he began his presidency, Biden signed an unusual executive order making sure everyone in
the country knew that the attacks on Asian Americans were wrong and “un-American.”
He came out strong for us in his first national television address a few weeks ago.
And then, after meeting with local AAPI leaders after last week’s shootings in Atlanta, Biden
once again elevated our status simply by showing everyone he has our backs. His remarks are
worth remembering because they put him on record, as he described the impact of Trump
administration rhetoric on the AAPI community.
“It’s been a year of living in fear for their lives,” Biden said of all AAPIs in the country. “Hate
and violence often hide in plain sight and often are met with silence. That’s been true throughout
our history. and that has to change.
“Because our silence is complicity. We cannot be complicit. We have to speak out. We have to
act. For all the good the laws can do, we have to change our hearts.
“Hate can have no safe harbor in America. It must stop. And it’s on all of us, all of us together, to
make it stop.”
Strong words, from no less than the president of the United States.
It’s enough to unite Asian Americans. Is our fear enough to unite a country?
Not with Republicans like Texas Congressman Chip Roy, who couldn’t find the empathy at last
week’s Judiciary Subcommittee hearing to change his heart and join in condemning the murder
of eight people in Atlanta, six of whom were Asian American women.
“My concern about the hearing is that it seems to want to venture into the policing of rhetoric,”
said Roy, a Trump backer who was trying to defend the ex-president’s “China Virus” and “Kung
Flu” remarks.
Asian American voters, a third of whom voted Republican for Trump, should remember this. The
Republicans who remain hell-bent on defending Trump’s big lie–that he won the 2020
election–see “China Virus” as a matter of Trump’s free speech.
And what of the thousands of AAPIs victimized by his hateful turn of phrase?
Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) let him have it.
“This hearing was to address the hurt and pain of our community, and to find solutions,” Meng
said in a rare show of emotion and passion. “We will not let you take our voice away from us.”
That’s where we are today.
People are angry. And only the Democrats truly seem interested, not just in stopping the hate but
in recognizing it.
This week, Meng and Sen. Mazie Hirono continued to campaign for their Covid Hate Crime Bill
that would have the Justice Department conduct fast reviews of possible hate crime cases. This
was thought up long before the shootings in Atlanta, but it would seem to be perfect timing. The
the bill also sets up an online reporting system in different Asian languages that would stop the
undercounting of hate crimes and make it easy for AAPIs to report them.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, the Atlanta shooting suspect, has been charged with eight counts of
murder and one count of aggravated assault. Long has admitted to the shootings but told police
he was just a religious man battling sex addiction. The shootings Long told police, weren’t
racially motivated.
That’s what they all say.
Ronald Ebens, who killed Vincent Chin with a baseball bat, said the same thing.
Ebens did get off without spending time in jail. Long is being held without bail while the police
continue to investigate.
That does nothing for Asian Americans, still grief-stricken and angry. Hate crime enhancements
could easily be applied if the new Georgia state hate crime statute that expands coverage to
include sex as well as race, is used.
But if that’s not forthcoming, it would definitely send Asian Americans a harsh message of our
real value in this country.
It will also test the community’s strength and courage. What will our response be then? Will
others in the BIPOC feel our pain, join us in alliance, and speak with one voice in unison against
these crimes?
Or will AAPI be left wondering how we get justice for our six sisters killed in Atlanta?
Soon Chung Park.
Hyun Jung Grant.
Suncha Kim.
Yong Ae Yue.
Xiaojie Tan.
Daoyou Feng.
They are our dead, the latest in the sad narrative of Asian Americans in this country since the
19th Century, the agonizing history of recycled hate.
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He’s a veteran Bay Area media person and a
former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Go to his blog at www.amok.com for an
interview with Oakland playwright Ishmael Reed about Reed’s new play on the exploitation of
Jean-Michel Basquiat.
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