Lunar newsletter: Live-streamers in love, an ‘epidemic of hate’ and TikTok experiments
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Valerie Chow, a television producer in Los Angeles, had just started planning a series of videos to address Covid-19-related anti-Asian sentiment in the United States when she experienced it first-hand.
“I was out walking my dog when a homeless man started yelling at me, ‘nasty b****, go back to China’, throwing punches and trying to kick my dog,” recalls Chow, who has produced unscripted shows for Netflix and the Food Network.
“I ran back towards my building but he chased me, still screaming. It was like that cliché in every murder scene where the victim’s hand is trembling, and she drops her keys. That was me in that moment.”
She is not the only one taking action. In mid-March, a trio of organisations – the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and San Francisco State University’s Asian-American Studies Department – formed the Stop AAPI Hate reporting centre to support Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in the country.