Trauma and anxiety as violence continues | Morning Newsletter
And, the racial gap for vaccines widens.
The Morning Newsletter
Start your day with the Philly news you need and the stories you want all in one easy-to-read newsletter
Good morning from The Inquirer newsroom.
First: Philly’s Asian American community is grappling with trauma and anxiety as increased threats and violence continue.
Then: The FEMA vaccination site has more than doubled Philly’s vaccination rate — and widened the racial gap.
And: The FBI arrested the president of the Philadelphia Proud Boys on Wednesday in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
— Ashley Hoffman (@_ashleyhoffman, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)
Since the pandemic hit, Asian Americans have faced racist violence at a far higher rate than they previously had.
“Chinese virus, go back to where you came from!” one man told us his attacker screamed at him. The uptick follows a long, troubling history of people weaponizing diseases to commit anti-Asian xenophobic acts that contribute to harmful perceptions.
Across the country, the anger has escalated to violence, most recently Tuesday evening in shootings at three Asian-owned Atlanta-area businesses that left eight dead, including six Asian women.
Over the last year, nearly 3,800 anti-Asian hate incidents have been reported, 97 of them in Pennsylvania and 59 in New Jersey. In 2020, Philadelphia received 28 reports of acts of hate against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting database created when the pandemic started in response to the increase in racial violence. And now there’s the fear that reopening will make matters even worse.
We’re bringing you reporter Erin McCarthy’s story on the trauma and anxiety Asian Americans are facing.
As the mass FEMA clinic vaccinated thousands in just two weeks since opening, it has widened the racial gap in the process.
Pre-FEMA site opening, 11.9% of white Philly residents had been vaccinated compared with only 6.4% of Black residents. The gap has nearly doubled since, from 5.5 percentage points to 10.5 percentage points. At the very beginning, officials cited the urgency to vaccinate everyone at the same rate as one of the reasons for the clinic. But in an Inquirer analysis, we found that white, Asian, and Hispanic residents all received bigger shares of the vaccines at the FEMA inoculation site than at sites across the city.
Community members discussed how to bridge the vaccine equity gap by prioritizing those who don’t have such easy access to vaccinations with reporters Jonathan Lai, Sean Collins Walsh, and Laura McCrystal. Read on for their story on the uneven vaccine rollout at the FEMA site that’s full of helpful visuals.
Quickly find out when you’ll receive your $1,400 stimulus check with this tracking tool.
What’s in the stimulus bill? Here’s how you can benefit, from checks to health care to tax credits and more.
Here’s how to prepare for your vaccine appointment once you have one.
Where can you get a COVID-19 vaccine in the Philly area? Use our lookup tool.
Track the spread of coronavirus in the region.
What you need to know today
The FBI arrested Zach Rehl, the president of the Philadelphia Proud Boys, at his Port Richmond home on Wednesday on charges he plotted with prominent leaders of the organization to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Leaders of all four suburban counties are pushing the state to give them vaccine doses -- without a mass clinic that they say would deepen inequalities.
Inside efforts prioritizing those among Philly’s vulnerable immigrants get the pandemic care they need.
Philly is likely to see a record number of homicides and shootings this year, Mayor Kenney said yesterday.
After three years and three months in Philly church sanctuary, Carmela Hernandez and her four children are officially starting their new lives outside its walls.
Just two weeks after reopening, a Philly elementary school closes due to a COVID-19 outbreak that led to at least five known cases.
Americans won’t have to pay 2020 income tax on unemployment checks up to a certain amount.
Inspectors are looking into a Pa. mail processing plant where mail delays have been an issue over the last year.
Through your eyes | #OurPhilly
What a way to wake up. Cheers for sharing this shot of a sun-dappled morning.
Tag your Instagram posts or tweets with #OurPhilly and we’ll pick our favorite each day to feature in this newsletter and give you a shout-out!
That’s interesting
🥊 Before Marvelous Marvin Hagler became a champ the world over, first came his formative Philly showdowns.
🥤 Here’s what Philly food community players say about what’s next for the scene, from mask clashes to digital service.
🏡 Growing vegetables as if you’re some sort of godly domestic creature? This is how to turn your Philly rowhouse backyard into a vegetable garden on the cheap.
🎭 Sasha Velour from RuPaul’s Drag Race is now gracing an Opera Philadelphia digital production.
Opinions
“We need to continue making vaccine access universal and simple to understand, given that many of the people who work in food processing and packinghouses speak a language other than English,” — essential workers Dairyn Ortiz and Yecika Ramirez write that we need to be inviting essential workers to a universally accessible COVID-19 vaccine process.
Columnist Helen Ubiñas writes about how the daughter of a paralyzed gun-shot survivor wrote a powerful children’s book, When My Dad Went to the Hospital.
Instead of a hike, Philadelphia Water Department’s bondholders should make a sacrifice for the greater good, consumer reporter Lance Haver writes.
What we’re reading
Meet the North Philly veteran who pushed for positive action on gun violence for the city in Billy Penn’s interview.
Vox goes into America’s long history of hate crimes against Asian Americans.
Check out what life is like for one of the first residents of a 3D-printed house, designed for those facing housing insecurity, in this Mashable video.
It’s time to take a journey with the New York Times to a special corner of TikTok known as SquishTok where huggable toy “Squishmallows” reign.
This happy family had received a letter in the mail to get $100 to start saving up for college for their daughter. They thought it was junk mail. Far from it. Never too early to save up, so they say.