GETTING TO KNOW JOANN FIELDS

Joann Fields comes from a long line of Filipino advocates in San Diego and the Philippines. And because she’s seen such dedication and hard community work for so long, she’s ready to see change for real.

Her efforts to make sure that happens form a long list. She’s created a Lumpia Club Luncheon for networking and is guiding a Filipino COVID-19 Task Force that she said was formed to correct a lack of representation by the county. She’s also been a strong and vocal advocate for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. in recent weeks amid a rise in violence and hate toward those communities.

Her goal is to see all this work culminate in a Filipino Resource Center to uplift generations of Filipino Americans to come. She joined the Name Drop San Diego podcast to talk about her advocacy work.

Read excerpts here or listen to the full episode in your favorite listening app.

On the Filipino COVID-19 Task Force:

That was necessary because there was a county task force and I sat in a couple meetings and thought, hey, we don’t have representation here . ... We didn’t see active outreach. So why wait? Why not put it together? We’d like to have resources to have the collateral, to have big websites and all of that, but we can’t wait. The pandemic is here. People are dying. Our first month in January, five prominent Filipinos passed away. It’s just so frustrating. What do we need to do to prove that we’re here and prove that it’s affecting our community? And I don’t ever want to pit ourselves against anyone but we’re having to prove that we exist so that we can have outreach, contract tracers, testing and vaccines in our neighborhoods that are readily accessible.

On working to stop AAPI hate:

I really think people hate because they fear, and they fear what they don’t know. There’s also the fact that people only know what they know. If you don’t know how big the Asian Pacific Islander umbrella is, how diverse it is, the different backgrounds that we have, then it’s easier to just not like someone because someone said that they’re the cause of COVID-19 — it’s the Chinese flu, it’s the kung flu. It’s easier to believe that when the person saying that is a leader. I believe if we have opportunities to learn about each other’s cultures, each other’s heritages and to work side by side . ... I look to our young people to see if they have suggestions for how to address this. It’s a combination of dialogue, policy change and education.

On San Diego’s support for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders:

The situation that we’re in with Stop AAPI Hate is bittersweet because now more communities amongst Asian Pacific Islanders are coming together in different coalitions, whereas we did not have that coalition building as rapid as it is now. We also have folks that are outside of the API community that are saying, I support you, I stand by you, how can I help? We didn’t have that before. But while we have your attention now, there are the issues we need to address. It’s part of an education process. The vigils, the rallies, we need those because it’s an outlet to let out anger and frustration, but what’s after the march? What’s after the vigil? What is the systemic change that we want? That comes with the dialogue we’re starting to have and, more importantly, the action that will be taken after.