Solo dining is one of life’s great pleasures — and privileges.
At a recent family gathering, the conversation turned to dining, and from there to a common practice of mine: eating alone in restaurants.
My grandmother, who’s in her 80s and grew up in the upstate town where they all live, said she’d never do it, that when she was a girl it was frowned upon and it still felt strange to her. Other female relatives a generation younger talked about their reticence to eat in a place where they thought they’d be judged by fellow diners, silently pitied as a loser. One aunt who waited tables at an upscale restaurant said she always felt bad for people who were eating alone, wondering if they were lonely. “Unless they had a book with them,” she added, smiling.
I’ll be honest: It’s hard for me to wrap my head around any of this, even though history shows that my female relatives’ sentiments come from decades of American practices and prejudices. Though I’ve been with my husband for 18 years, nearly half my life, I spend a lot of time eating alone — while traveling for work, grabbing a bite between appointments, or just because I want to. I might have a book with me, or I might not. But a life without eating alone is unimaginable to me.
These days, I’m in good company. Solo dining has risen sharply in recent years, according to data collected by the restaurant reservation company OpenTable. The internet is full of people proudly proclaiming their love of eating alone and extolling its many virtues, often over and against the same assumption of my grandmother and aunts: that solo dining is socially unacceptable, something to be feared. (This fear even has a dubious psychological name: solomangarephobia.)
Yet the joys of eating alone have been documented since ancient times, and I’m happy that it’s never occurred to me to think of solo dining as anything other than an ordinary act. The history of solo dining, particularly for women, hasn’t always been welcoming, and even now there are some best practices I’ve developed to help me do it well. But for me, eating alone in a restaurant is almost meditative, even if I’m just wolfing down a plate of pasta between meetings.
Dining out by myself is a form of self-care, a way to derive immense satisfaction from the experience — the ambience, the flavors and textures, the chatter around me. Without a dining companion to entertain, I can sit with my thoughts, watch the world around me, eavesdrop on fellow diners, maybe have a conversation with the bartender if I’m seated at the bar. I start to remember that I’m not alone at all; I’m part of a community of people, and most people, believe it or not, are friendly and interesting. Eating alone, in a paradoxical way, can get me out of my own head.
On a recent solo research trip to San Francisco, I picked at random a seafood restaurant humming with activity, and took the last seat at the bar. The meal that followed — an octopus dish, and a strange little wine the bartender recommended — was transcendent, something to be savored. I was glad I was eating it surrounded by people who smiled when I sat and left me to myself. Not once did I feel out of place.
But maybe I should rethink that feeling. When I started digging into the history of solo dining — particularly as a woman, unaccompanied by a man — I realized this act I take for granted several times a week is one that previous generations had to fight for. Just over a century ago, a woman dining without a man in a restaurant was presumed to be looking for business, so to speak; she was disreputable, and the restaurant that allowed her to do such a thing was, too.
That stigma was relatively new in the 20th century. In the early 19th century, communal dining at long tables in restaurants was the norm. After the Civil War, the luxury restaurant was born, and with it the private dining table. Diners usually came in pairs. “Lone women” were frequently discouraged or even barred from fine restaurants, and as restaurant historian Jan Whitaker told me, a “lone woman” didn’t have to actually be alone — a group of women unaccompanied by any man were also considered to be “lone women.”
A radical exception came in 1868, when the New York restaurant Delmonico’s became the first to serve a group of women unaccompanied by men. Even then, it was a planned event hosted by a women’s social club, not a regular policy. Things started to change when women entered the workplace and gained, almost by necessity, more freedoms. Lunch counters, diners, and establishments designed to make solo diners, especially women, feel more comfortable started to pop up, particularly in cities. “As a lot of women started working around World War I, that just had to break the system down,” Whitaker noted.
Even as late as the 1960s, however, some restaurants barred women diners altogether, or allowed them in only if accompanied by a man. In 1969, Betty Friedan and 15 other women charged into the Oak Room — the storied restaurant at New York’s opulent Plaza Hotel — bearing signs with slogans like “Wake up PLAZA! Get with it NOW!” and “The Oak Room is Outside the Law.” It worked: Four months after the protest, facing media coverage of the event, the restaurant overturned its no-women policy.
As women slowly gained the freedom to dine alone in public, the fear of being bothered by others — especially men who assumed the women wanted attention — became more acute. The solution was a familiar one. “Taking a book to a restaurant, reading it while you’re eating, that was just universal,” Whitaker notes. It was an especially attractive option for women. “Sometimes women just did not want to look like they wanted to be disturbed,” she said.
That certainly has continued. I love to bring a book to a bar, though I find it can be more of a conversation starter than a conversation ender these days. A phone is a more reliable way to signal your unavailability.
And the use of the phone during solo dining is pretty noticeable. The art photographer Nancy Scherl recently released a book called Dining Alone: In the Company of Solitude, containing decades of her photos of solo diners around the world. “I feel that sometimes the phone becomes a bit of a crutch for people — that they are pulling out their cellphone instead of people-watching, or smiling at someone who might be sitting next to them, or starting up a conversation with someone who might be sitting across from them or two tables down,” she said. “It’s nice to break down the barriers and feel that you can say hi, instead of whipping out your cellphone.”
Guilty as charged, though I love the random restaurant encounter, especially after so many months of severely limited opportunities to chat with strangers. Looking at my phone or reading a book also robs me of the opportunity to single-mindedly enjoy the experience, savor the flavors, be fully present in the moment.
So one of my intentions for 2023 is to continue to perfect the art of solo dining, basking in the experience whether I’m outside on the sidewalk letting the world go by or perched at a bar eating truffle fries. There’s no need to be afraid of what people think. “When we are in the position of observer, we have no clue what people are thinking or feeling,” Scherl told me. “We don’t know if they’re content or they are miserable — a lot of it is concealed.” Instead, I can remember that I’m exercising hard-won freedoms and doing something good for myself, too.
And in my years as an intrepid solo diner, I’ve learned a few tricks.
The best way to start is to sit at the bar, especially in a fancy restaurant. I like to watch the bartender make cocktails, or maybe chat with a fellow diner. You almost never need a reservation at the bar, and the look of relief in the host’s eyes when you say “I’ll just sit at the bar” in a busy restaurant makes you feel like a saint. These days, bars are designed for solo dining.
Some people feel awkward dining alone because they worry they’re taking up space that could be used by two diners, thus generating more revenue for the restaurant. That’s a very compassionate position, but there are ways around it. Try, for instance, an early dinner, before the restaurant fills up. (In my city, that means getting there around 5:30 pm; it varies by place.) Or go for lunch, which is often less busy anyhow. Be sure to tip generously.
A communal table (or a chef’s table) can also be a great option, and gives the added benefit of inviting conversation with other diners. Not all restaurants have them, but they’re especially good options while traveling in another city or country. Call or research the restaurant ahead of time to see if it’s an option.
Of course, recognize that practice makes perfect. Bring a book or magazine if it makes you feel more comfortable. But know that the more you do it, the less “weird” it will seem. Focus on eating mindfully, allowing yourself to focus on the flavors and presentation. Ask for recommendations from the staff. If you’re at the bar and they’re not too busy, strike up a conversation with the bartender. Some of the most memorable experiences I’ve had dining out, especially while traveling, have come from recommendations I’ve gotten at bars.
And most of all, have fun with it. As someone wisely once told me, “Nobody is thinking about you, because they’re all thinking about themselves.” Even if they are thinking about you — who cares? Your solo dining might inspire someone else to try it.
Alissa Wilkinson covers film and culture for Vox. Alissa is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics.
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Why Kevin McCarthy agreed to put a radical plan to remake the tax code up for a vote.
Kevin McCarthy had a hell of a time getting elected as House speaker, and a list of all the concessions he made to the most conservative members of his party wouldn’t fit here. But one of the more important was a concession to hold a vote about a radical tax reform proposal known as the FairTax.
The FairTax, at its heart, is simple enough: it would take almost every federal tax and replace them with a fat 30 percent sales tax on everything. Virtually every American would get a monthly check from the government to cover the cost of paying the tax on essentials. It’s a radical idea, but one which since its first introduction to Congress in 1999 has been a favorite of conservative Republicans. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) already has 23 cosponsors for the current iteration. Prominent party figures like Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain have all championed the idea over the years.
Not surprisingly, liberal groups who judge the proposal regressive are against it. But so are many enthusiastic conservative tax-cutters, like the Wall Street Journal editorial board and Grover Norquist. Here’s what the National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru had to say about it:
“Any House Republican who backs this bill can accurately be accused of voting for … raising the price of everything by a huge amount at a time when inflation is already high; shifting more of the tax burden to the middle class; instituting a large new wealth tax on senior citizens; increasing federal spending by a massive amount; increasing the deficit; and creating large black markets.”
Otherwise, it’s a great idea.
There’s something oddly comforting to me about the return of FairTax discourse. I’ve been following the idea since 2004 or so, when I was 14, because I was not an athletic child. It somehow just keeps coming back again and again, despite its obvious and many weaknesses.
I’m here to help. Here’s everything you ever wanted to know about the FairTax but were afraid to ask.
So, how big is this FairTax?
It’s 30 percent! And it would apply to just about everything, from groceries to health care to rent and home purchases to interest on your credit card.
Sales taxes are regressive, right? Won’t this hurt poor people?
Flat sales taxes like the FairTax are probably regressive on their own. Most economists’ view is that rich people spend less of their income, and save more, so as a share of income a sales tax takes less from them than it does as a share of poor people’s income. (Some recent research disputes this in the US context, mostly because sales taxes often exempt spending that makes up a bigger share of low-income people’s budgets, such as rent and groceries.)
But sales taxes can still be good policy if used to fund progressive programs, as the Nordic countries do. The FairTax, for its part, tries to offset some of the negative impact on poor people by including what it calls a tax “prebate.” Each household would get a monthly check worth 23 percent of the poverty threshold for a household their size.
In 2023, that’s $279.45 a month for a single adult, with an extra $98.52 per month for each additional person in the house. For a family of four, this adds up to $6,900 in no-strings-attached cash payments every year.
Those checks are just for poor people, right?
No, they’re for everyone! Or at least every citizen and most legal residents. Everyone with a Social Security number would be eligible. It would instantly become one of the largest programs in the entire federal government. If you multiply the number of households in the US by the rebate size for the average household of 2.6 people, you get a total annual cost of about $650 billion. That’s around the size of the defense budget, and about what Medicare cost before the Covid-19 crisis. The $1,400 checks that the Biden administration sent out in March 2021 only cost $402 billion.
So the government would just be mailing checks to people with no strings attached. Isn’t that a basic income?
I think so, yes. The FairTax would create the first permanent, unconditional cash program for which all Americans are eligible. That’s an enormous step toward basic income, even if it’s not enough money to live on.
That’s pretty neat. So this prebate, it makes the FairTax progressive?
Lol, no, it does not. The FairTax gets rid of the personal and corporate income taxes, and the estate tax, which are the three most progressive taxes in the federal code. For most poor people, the personal income tax already gives them money through provisions like the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Child Tax Credit. Getting rid of it means all those benefits go away.
At the top end, the rich go from paying a top rate of 40.8 percent on their wages, as well as 23.8 percent on their income from investments, to just paying the 30 percent tax on everything they buy. But wealthy people save more of their income than non-wealthy people do, and everything they save would be tax-free. By one measure, rich people in the 2010s saved 8.5 percent of their income, while the bottom 90 percent had a negative savings rate, spending 2.8 percent more than they earned.
I know of no credible estimates of the distributional impact of the FairTax, if it were to replace income and payroll taxes, but when the Bush administration appointed a panel to study tax reform proposals, it concluded that using the tax to replace the income tax alone would sharply raise taxes on the middle class.
How did this idea come about, then?
The origins of the FairTax lie in that strange period of time called the mid-90s. Republicans had retaken the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, in part by campaigning hard against President Bill Clinton’s 1993 budget plan, which included massive tax hikes on top earners. The richest taxpayers had seen the tax they pay on the next dollar they earn (their “marginal” rate) grow by about 12 cents, which made conservatives in Congress very, very mad.
Their response in 1995 and 1996 was a flurry of dramatic tax reform proposals from Republicans in Congress and in the 1996 presidential race (or both). Almost all of these ideas attempted to move the US away from taxing income, and toward taxing consumption. House Majority Leader Dick Armey and presidential contender Steve Forbes championed a 17 percent “flat tax” designed by Stanford researchers Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka.
The flat tax sounds vaguely familiar…
Yeah, the flat tax. The flat tax looks superficially like an income tax, but is really a sales tax in disguise.
Exciting disguise!
Do not taunt me. The way the Hall-Rabushka flat tax would work is that businesses would pay a form of sales tax called a “subtraction-style value-added tax,” which is most notably used in Japan and the state of New Hampshire. The way subtraction VATs normally work is that businesses add up their sales, and subtract all their payments to other businesses, and pay a tax on the difference; the sum of the taxes paid by each business in this way is equivalent to if it had been levied as a sales tax when a consumer ultimately bought the product.
Hall and Rabushka’s version let businesses also deduct wages they paid. Then individuals would pay a flat tax on their wages, with a standard deduction to make it slightly more progressive. Income from capital gains or dividends would be totally exempt. The net effect is that you’re taxing the same consumption that a sales tax does.
They totally exempted all capital income? That seems a bit extreme.
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Mike Mergen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Yeah, but it was very much in vogue. Even the otherwise moderate Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who would switch parties in 2009 and vote for Obamacare in 2010, wanted a 20 percent flat tax.
But straight-up sales taxes, which effectively exempt capital income as well, were popular in this period too. Figures like then-House Ways and Means Committee chair Bill Archer (R-TX) and senator/presidential candidate Richard Lugar (R-IN) proposed replacing all personal and corporate income taxes with a single retail sales tax. And into this mix, a group of Texas businessmen launched Americans for Fair Taxation, which offered an even more ambitious plan to replace not just income taxes, but Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, with one big 30 percent sales tax.
So that’s the FairTax! Did actual politicians embrace it too?
Yes, many!
FairTax wound up having much more staying power than its peers from 1995-96 like the flat tax, or alternative sales tax plans. AFT sought to build an actual movement around the idea, and got a congressional champion in Rep. John Linder (R-GA), later joined by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). Linder’s 2005 book on the idea with talk radio host Neal Boortz was a bestseller.
By 2008, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was running for the Republican presidential nomination on the idea, while rivals like former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) offered at least tepid support. Former Gov. Gary Johnson (L-NM) touted it in his 2012 and 2016 presidential runs as a Libertarian. The idea even got a Democratic backer in 2008: longshot former Sen. Mike Gravel (D-AK), who quite possibly made history as the first person to support both the FairTax and single-payer health care.
Man, the tax must raise a lot of money if it can pay for single-payer.
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Mike Gravel
This may shock you, but Mike Gravel did not really know what he was talking about.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any super-recent estimates of what the FairTax would bring in revenue-wise. One of the reasons I hope the House winds up voting on the idea is that would mean the Joint Committee on Taxation will have to “score” the bill, producing estimates of how much money it would bring in, how it would affect the deficit, and which taxpayers would pay less or more. That’d be exciting!
Your life depresses me.
Yeah, I know. For the time being, the most recent estimates we have of what the FairTax specifically would do come from Brookings Institution economist William Gale, who ran the numbers in 2005.
Assuming a reasonable amount of tax evasion (20 percent) — and the question of evasion is important, as you’ll see — he found that the FairTax would increase the deficit by about $10.6 trillion over 10 years. In order to avoid increasing the deficit 10 years later, the FairTax would have to be set at 64.4 percent.
Are you kidding me?
I am not! And in fact, that’s probably too low. Gale is assuming there that, as the FairTax proponents suggest, the tax would apply to purchases by the government, which would effectively force state and local governments to cough up hundreds of billions of extra dollars to the federal government every year. If government purchases were exempted, as is normal for sales taxes, the revenue-neutral rate would be 81.6 percent.
The point is that at a 30 percent rate, it’s reasonable to expect the FairTax to increase the federal budget deficit by trillions of dollars a year.
I assume the FairTax people have … a response to this.
They do. For one thing, they don’t like it when you refer to their tax rate as “30 percent.” While it increases the cost of, say, a $10 item by 30 percent, or $3, they argue that because $3 is 23 percent of the $13 post-tax cost, it’s actually a 23 percent tax.
Wait … seriously?
Yes, it’s stupid. More substantively, Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist and avowed FairTax partisan, and a team of co-authors wrote a working paper responding to Gale and the Bush tax reform panel, and insisting that a rate of 31.27 percent (23.82 percent “tax-inclusive”) would make the proposal revenue-neutral. That is, the FairTax proposal would barely increase the deficit as written.
But the paper implicitly assumes no, or very little, tax evasion under the plan, which seems absurd to me. It’s a sales tax of 30 percent or more; people will have very strong incentives to evade it. To take just one example: the FairTax wouldn’t apply to transfers of used goods; state sales taxes tend not to hit small yard sale-style sales of used goods, but they do apply to things like used cars, which would be totally exempt under the FairTax. The tax would hit newly constructed houses, but not existing ones. Obviously this is going to result in evasion schemes taking advantage of the wild discrepancy in how new and used goods are treated.
Business-to-business transactions are also totally exempt, unlike under a European-style value-added tax. (This is going to be fun when my wife and I found Scammin’ Inc., a small business headquartered in our apartment that, as a business, can purchase all our groceries tax-free.)
Perhaps the biggest problem is that FairTax proponents insist they want to tax more sales than just about any sales tax currently existing in the real world. Gale estimates that about 91 percent of household spending would be hit by the FairTax. Meanwhile, a recent Tax Policy Center study found that state sales taxes in the US only cover 39 percent of spending; most states tax much less than half of spending, with California taxing 36 percent and Texas 38 percent. Value-added taxes in other rich countries, which generally work better than retail sales taxes because they also tackle business-to-business transactions, only hit 56 percent of consumption.
It’s of course possible that Congress would pass the FairTax without including a multitude of exemptions for things like food and medicine and cars and other things that people don’t like to see taxed. However, this is Congress we’re talking about, so this will not happen.
It seems like a federal sales tax is a bad idea that will never happen?
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Matt Cardy/Getty Images
When it comes to FairTax, yes. I expect the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation to report that it will increase the deficit by trillions of dollars every year, and increase taxes on the middle class, and I expect these findings to kill it in Congress. Much less ambitious tax reforms with many fewer problems have died for much worse reasons (for example). The FairTax is never happening.
But I wouldn’t be so quick to reject sales taxes more broadly. There’s a reason every rich country except the US has a value-added tax: it’s a very efficient, easy-to-administer way to raise lots of money for progressive social programs like universal health care, child allowances, long-term care, and more.
Gale, the FairTax critic, is actually a vocal advocate for adopting a VAT in the US. I like his idea of pairing a 10 percent VAT with a small universal basic income to make sure low-income people come out ahead. He estimates the bottom 20 percent of earners would see their incomes rise by nearly 17 percent as a result, while households with income above $90,000 or so would pay more. If you use some of the revenue to pay for the now-expired expanded child tax credit, the net effect would likely be a substantial reduction in poverty.
You could also, as Columbia professor Michael Graetz and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) have proposed, use the VAT to exempt all but the wealthiest individuals from the income tax, by creating standard deductions of $50,000 or $100,000 for couples. This isn’t as progressive as using it for a UBI, but it would vastly simplify income tax collection and enable the large majority of Americans to not worry about filing taxes ever.
Economist Larry Summers once noted that a VAT has not been adopted in the US because “liberals think it’s regressive and conservatives think it’s a money machine” that’s a little too good at raising revenue. But if conservatives realized it’s regressive and liberals realized it’s a money machine, he quipped, maybe it could happen. The popularity of the FairTax suggests conservatives understand very well that sales taxes are regressive. But their plan is extremely half-baked. Maybe if they let liberals use it as a bit of a money machine, we might get somewhere.
“It’s been really hard to process all of this.”
Two recent mass shootings have Asian American communities in California — and the rest of the country — reeling.
The shootings, both of which included Asian American victims and perpetrators, have been shocking and devastating for a community that’s still grappling with the violence many of its members experienced during the pandemic.
“These two particular tragedies have been jarring and triggering for a lot of Asian Americans,” says James Zarsadiaz, a professor at the University of San Francisco who’s written extensively on the history of Monterey Park, where one of the shootings took place. “It’s been really hard to process all of this … because for [many] Asian Americans, these last few years, it has been back-to-back tragedy.”
The shootings happened within days of one another this past week. In Monterey Park, California — a suburb near Los Angeles — a 72-year-old Asian American man killed 11 people, all of whom are of Asian descent, at a local dance studio on Saturday; he also wounded nine others. Police have yet to identify a motive for the shooting, though they’re reportedly looking into personal connections that the shooter had with patrons of the studio.
In Half Moon Bay — a beach town south of San Francisco — a 66-year-old Asian American man killed 7 people, including Chinese and Latino farm workers on Monday. The suspect worked alongside some of the victims on a mushroom farm in Half Moon Bay and previously worked at a second farm that employed other victims. Police are reviewing the attack as a potential incident of “workplace violence,” though the investigation is still ongoing. In both cases, more information about the victims as well as the suspects’ motives are still being released.
Both shootings occurred as the Lunar New Year holiday, a time that’s typically a joyous opportunity for celebration with friends and family, was just getting underway. Community activists note that the shootings have only compounded past traumas, tapping into existing fears about anti-Asian violence and raising concerns about gun control and mental health. These shootings follow anti-Asian attacks that surged in recent years as Asian Americans were scapegoated for the spread of the coronavirus. Between March 2020 and March 2022, the Stop AAPI Hate advocacy group has received reports of nearly 11,000 anti-Asian incidents including physical violence, verbal abuse, and property damage.
“I feel like it’s just been an onslaught of violence, like one after another. We have just experienced a set of storms,” says Chrissy Lau, a history professor at California State University Monterey Bay, who specializes in Asian American studies.
The California shootings have been a terrible “set of storms”
The shootings have added to the pain and anxiety that Asian Americans have experienced in the last few years, activists say.
“Really, it is, you know, stacking it on top of each other,” says Manjusha Kulkarni, a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, an organization dedicated to tracking anti-Asian violence and harassment. “Each incident becomes another one where the community is reeling.”
For some, the initial news of the Monterey Park shooting prompted fears of another racist attack on Asian Americans similar to violence that increased during the pandemic. In the last few years, there’s been an uptick of hate crimes against Asian Americans, blaming the group for the pandemic. And as politicians have leaned into more incendiary anti-China rhetoric, experts have worried that such statements could inflame xenophobic sentiment and actions as well.
“There is still that feeling of being targeted, and being fearful, when we hear about a shooting like this,” Connie Chung Joe, the executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles, told the Associated Press.
Exacerbating this fear were previous anti-Asian attacks including the 2020 stabbing of an Asian family in a Midland, Texas, Sam’s Club parking lot and a 2021 mass shooting in multiple Atlanta-area spas that killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent. As more information has been announced, however, the revelation that the suspects in both recent shootings are older Asian American men has prompted its own sadness and reflection. Given the limited information on the motives of these attacks, many in the Asian American community are still trying to wrap their heads around both the causes behind them, and some of the similarities between the shooters.
“It’s from my people and against my people, so it’s very sad,” says Min Zhou, a sociology and Asian American studies professor at UCLA.
“He chose to do harm on his fellow Asian Americans, so I think that’s kind of like that additional level of hurt,” adds Kulkarni, of the Monterey Park shooter.
The shootings have shaken people’s sense of safety in both places. Historically, Monterey Park has been a “vibrant Asian American enclave,” says Kulkarni, and “one of the first suburbs in the United States to have an Asian majority,” according to Zarsadiaz. Since the 1970s, Monterey Park has established itself as a “suburban Chinatown” and become a central, middle-class hub of Asian American restaurants, strip malls, and gathering places.
“I go to dim sum in Monterey Park, I play volleyball in Monterey Park, I do my food shopping in Monterey Park,” says Lau, who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, where the suburb is located.
“Monterey Park, you know, holds a lot of cultural value for a lot of Asian Americans, because, again, it reflects where a lot of us live, or at least a lot of us grew up,” says Zarsadiaz.
The violence in a historically safe space for Asian Americans has inspired both immense grief and solidarity. “That fear is always there when you have such a devastating incident and experience,” says Zhou, who said her son’s in-laws frequented the dance studio where the shootings occurred.
The Los Angeles County coroner’s office has released the names of the victims in the Monterey Park shooting, and they include Xiujuan Yu, 57; Hongying Jian, 62; Lilian Li, 63; Mymy Nhan, 65; Muoi Dai Ung, 67; Diana Man Ling Tom, 70; Wen-Tau Yu, 64; Valentino Marcos Alvero, 68; Ming Wei Ma, 72; Yu-Lun Kao, 72; and Chia Ling Yau, 76. Many were older Asian Americans who frequented the studio and enjoyed ballroom dancing.
In Half Moon Bay, the shooter targeted farm workers on two mushroom farms including both Chinese and Latino laborers, fueling fears among a community that’s already vulnerable.
Currently, there are 2,500 to 3,000 farm workers who work in and around Half Moon Bay, a beachside town in Northern California, according to the Los Angeles Times. These include migrant workers and longer-term residents, people of Asian and Latino descent and some immigrants who are undocumented. Historically, Asian Americans, including Chinese, Japanese, and FilIpino workers, have comprised a substantial portion of California’s agricultural workforce, although their numbers have declined since 1965, when US policy resulted in the influx of more Asian immigrants in other professions.
Half Moon Bay Vice Mayor Joaquin Jimenez has said that some farm workers are afraid to go back to work following this horrific attack, which took place where many workers lived and was witnessed by children returning from school.
“It’s important to humanize who these farm workers are: They are mothers and fathers and uncles,” Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga, executive director of ALAS, a Half Moon Bay nonprofit dedicated to advocacy for Latino workers, told the San Francisco Chronicle. Farm workers have long faced challenging working conditions in the state, including low wages, overcrowded housing, and workplace exploitation. Now, added to those concerns is the fear of fatal violence at work.
Information about the victims in Half Moon Bay is not yet fully available, though six of the seven victims’ names have been released by the San Mateo County coroner’s office. They are Zhi Shen Liu, 73; Qi Zhong Cheng, 66; Marciano Jimenez Martinez, 50; Ye Tao Bing, 43; Ai Xiang Zhang, 74; and Jing Zhi Lu, 64.
The shootings have prompted calls for policy change
An outpouring of support for the victims and calls for policy changes have followed the shootings. Members of both the Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay communities are responding with mutual aid and financial support for the victims and their families.
“For us, the focus is on what we can do for the victims, the survivors, their families, and community members,” says Kulkarni. The LA Times has compiled a list of fundraising campaigns to help victims of the Monterey Park shooting, and the San Jose Mercury News has also compiled a list to help victims of the Half Moon Bay shooting.
Beyond the help that’s focused on victims, experts and organizers are also urging stricter gun laws, more mental health resources for aging people, and greater scrutiny of domestic violence within the Asian American community. In both cases, the shooters were older Asian American men, and in the case of the Half Moon Bay attack, the shooter had previously received a temporary restraining order for violence against a roommate.
The similar age profiles of both shooters have led to calls for more investment in mental health and economic resources for Asian American elders, a group that often faces gaps in such services due to stigma, a lack of cultural fluency among physicians, and language barriers.
“I think the general consensus is that a lot of Asian Americans, particularly older Asian Americans, do not have the language or tools … to address mental health issues,” says Zarsadiaz.
Advocates and lawmakers have also ramped up the push for more robust gun control measures in the wake of the two shootings, including supporting a federal assault weapons ban that’s been held up in Congress. In the past, Asian Americans have strongly supported robust gun control measures — with 77 percent backing them in a 2022 AAPI Data survey — advocacy that’s poised to continue in the wake of these tragedies.
“This is a big issue of gun violence,” says Zhou. “And violence is not just unique to a particular group, so that needs to be addressed across the board.”