This Week on Arizona illustrated a special presentation of Arizona Public Media's 2022 Edward R Murrow Award Winners Stories about Arizona's Asian-American Pacific Islander community.

I think every time I think about the opportunity that was given to me by my parents to go to school here to make a living here.

It's extraordinary to pandemic dreams.

There is so much going on in them, whether it's emotionally or physically.

We visit a shelter just south of the border that provides support to asylum seekers Not one person that has been here has told me that he or she is embarking on this journey out of pleasure or because they just want to live somewhere else and school in the time of COVID19.

Ricardo and me, we're in uncharted territory.

You know, something seems to always go wrong Welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

Every year since 1971, the radio television digital news association honors achievements in broadcast and digital journalism with the Edward R. Murrow Awards.

Now, while not as well known as the Emmys, the Murrow Awards are among the most prestigious in American journalism.

And this year, Arizona Public Media one in five categories more than any other news organization in the state And this program won three of those awards.

This week will be revisiting our winning stories since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

There's been an alarming increase in violent attacks against members of the Asian-American Pacific Islander community.

This is linked to rhetoric blaming them for the spread of COVID19.

But producer Cáit Nísíomón and photographer John de Soto met with leaders of the local Asian-American community for the story.

We belong here to the story.

One original Mural Award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion We are here standing together because we are sad.

We are angry.

And we are exhausted by the rollercoaster ride of emotions that we've all been dealing with today.

And how are you doing Sorry, Many years ago, we chose to come here not just to pursue education, but also to pursue freedom.

And this country used to be the country.

Our people look up the humanity bad, you know, people are equal.

It doesn't matter.

The skin color doesn't matter where you from.

That's a value we believe to.

I never feel afraid.

Fear of anything.

I feel equal to everybody else.

But all of a sudden, I was like, why does a racial thing become such a big concern for the whole country?

Why we're being targeted and we're being to to be attacked.

To be point the finger to we heard so much the terrible attacks to the elderly and women, especially in San Francisco and New York.

People worry, they say if something's threat to your life and to your parents, your sister, brothers, should we call out for help?

When I saw those discussions and concerns and I said maybe we should reach out, we'll sit down with Tucson PD and we invited some politician and then from different department to listen to our concern to listen to the community's questions What is the legal grounds to defend myself or my loved ones?

With a legally owned firearm?

I am not interested in buying a weapon, but I do fear for my life right now.

The treatment towards Asian-American Pacific Islanders is uncalled for.

It's unjustified.

It should be denounced.

I'm wondering if there are educational efforts out there to help make that happen and to bring greater awareness and visibility to the Asian-American community.

A lot of the times people say, are those Asian group?

You know, they would not complaint, they would not they are the silent majority.

And I think those times have passed.

We have to first start to understand what the term Asian-American means.

You know, when they say AAPI, what does that mean?

That means everybody who, you know, have heritage from the Asian Pacific region and that involves more than, you know, 40 plus countries, if not more.

Some of them were natives.

They were born here in the United States.

So I guess people have to understand the group itself, what it means, and then talk about the contribution.

Chinese-American have been here since the 1800 Korean-American have been here probably since the fifties and sixties as well.

So they need to understand, yes, you know, this virus came from China but you know, it could have came from Africa.

It could have came from England.

Would you discriminate against, you know, anybody from England if it started in England first Chinese labor do the humongous contribution to the Transcontinental Railroad from the west to the east side.

It used to take six months to seven months after the railroad bill, seven days that make this country jump to a totally different stage.

This history was not being put in the education part.

So a lot of people don't know the thing.

China's come here to take things away.

But we're now with generations here.

We made our contributions, including Indian, Korean, Japanese people that you love in the technology science, entertainment, and they all made the contributions to this country.

So I think all the ethnic groups do something to their share.

Being an immigrant myself, I think every time I think about the opportunity that was given to me, by my parents to go to school here to make a living here, it's extraordinary.

Just like all the friends and families and everybody that I know a lot of them were born and raised here in the United States.

A lot of them very, very grateful.

But I also have a lot of people that don't understand what they have and they don't understand why so many people want to come here legally or otherwise.

It's because they don't have what we have here.

So if they would go and see the lives through other people's eyes, then I think they understand.

Well, not so different after all.

To my communities.

I hope they will stand up for whatever the problem that encounter any bias or any discrimination.

You know, when something like pandemic happen, what I understand is people us all the people live in this country, in this land, to work with each other, help each other to get over this, because from time to time, this pandemic, but pointing to each other doesn't help.

And we solve the problem.

Helping each other will unite it will make us more powerful and stronger, more I wish everybody health and stay well throughout this next however many months and when we can get together safely.

Again, I invite everybody to come back to the Chinese Cultural Center to visit so that we can share our stories and get back together and go back on the road to normalcy.

As Dr. Martin Luther King stated so eloquently.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness.

Only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate.

Only love can do that.

We must participate actively in the dialogs that create the light to overcome racism and support healing in our communities.

Over the past few years, people all around the world have reported having surreal, unusual dreams sparked by the pandemic.

When we enlisted the expertize of Dr. Michael Grander, the director of the Sleep and Health Clinic at the University of Arizona, he was able to answer questions from the subjects of our story about what their dreams were all about and what it might mean for the rest of us.

We'll share an excerpt from this fully animated story.

There was a collaboration between producer Cáit Nísíomón, animator Elena Lopez, photographer Bob Lindberg, and editor Nate Huffman.

This story won a regional Murrow Award for Excellence in Video so we're learning a lot about sleep and what it's for, and it seems to be that it might be for different things.

You know, this is why we study sleep in all kinds of species.

There was a great paper that came out last year from a physics aid group group showing that actually when training artificial intelligence systems by inducing a sleep like state, it actually dramatically improved the ability for them to learn and filter out junk.

My sleep has been good.

I dream almost every night and a lot of celebrities have been showing up in my dreams.

And I don't know why Michael Jordan was over here, you know, singing Mariachi Can all the Eagles get into a storm in Canada?

I'd like to know if it is just like a manifestation of what you're going through at the time.

Or if it's just random things that are in your subconscious somehow the way I like to think about it is if you're witnessing your dream, you're listening to your brain speak to itself in its native language.

And that's sort of what dreams are.

They're not really even meant to be observed.

They're experiences that your brain is having, and sometimes you get to eavesdrop on it, but it doesn't need you to and it actually kind of don't want you to, which is why you forget them as soon as you wake up.

We think about it as yourself, communicating in a language, the language of thought.

It's the language of feeling, it's the language of concept.

And in dreams you get to play around with ideas.

You get to take an idea and reshape it from a person into a chair.

And so they say, Why did I dream of that?

I say, I don't know.

Why would you dream with that?

They're like, Well, I don't know.

And that's why I'm asking.

You think, but this is your language of your own mind.

The one funny thing is, you know, you have the stereotypical dream of people leaving the house without pants on, you know, as this which is which which itself is fascinating because that's the vocabulary in your brain of that feeling of, oh my gosh, I forgot something important.

And I don't but something that I don't always pay attention to.

I've had dreams that are definitely dark sided, you know, where you're like, something's grabbing me, it's pulling me into the dark, and it wants something that I just intrinsically think it should not have.

And those can be terrifying.

So could dreams be a version of yourself from your optimal future?

Or helping guide you to meet them on that side of the fence?

So really, when you look at the brain and you look at the systems that control memory and the systems that control emotion, it looks like emotion is a really important part of how the memory system works, potentially because emotion is is what tells our brain what to remember.

You know, what is fear except for a flag for memory.

Like, remember this, this is important.

And memory needs that information to color it to understand how it fits in, how, you know, was this a good event or a bad event?

And it looks like one of the things that happens in dreaming is those rules break down on purpose to allow us to probe, see, process, integrate connections between things that we might not even be consciously aware of.

But they help us learn why?

Because clearly, evolution figured out that the that the brains that did that figured things out better so maybe it allows us to make sense of a world in a way that we can't actually do when we're awake.

And this time is unprecedented and there is so much anxiety and it is going to be in us and in our brains and in our dreams fighting for year in year, not all of our mirror award winners.

We're on the TV side, our radio show and podcast.

The Buzz, hosted by news director Christopher Conover, won a regional mural for Best Podcast for the episode bordered by the numbers which went beyond simple soundbites and examining the complexity of border apprehensions.

Another story from our southern border also won in the regional hard news television category.

Producer Tony Paniagua Argue and photographers Nate Huffman and Andrea Corona visite a shelter in Nogales, Sonora, in 2021 to see how nonprofits and religious organizations were continuing to support asylum seekers.

A few miles southeast of the US-Mexico border, on an expansive hilltop property of about two acres, a bi national alliance is providing refuge and hope for hundreds of migrants each has their own unique story, including 21 year old Abigail, who asked that we not show her face or use her full name.

She and her husband have a baby and a five year old.

Last year, the family fled the state of Guerrero on Mexico's Pacific coast.

Spanish language Deaths, killings, assaults, extortions and delinquency due to organized criminal groups.

It has gotten too dangerous for the average person, and our biggest wish is to protect our family.

And to live in a more secure environment.

Spanish language But at the of Miami, Missy has the power to say what us they are seeking political asylum in the United States, where they hope to reunite with Abigail's mother, who migrated to the US 15 years ago.

Her undocumented status has prevented her from traveling to Mexico to see Abigail or other relatives since then.

See the US Spanish language God willing, we will be able to arrive at my mother's house.

She is anxious to see us and help us and I dream of reuniting with her.

It will be like getting to know her all over again.

Abigail's family is staying at La Casa De Misericordia y de todas las Nationales.

the House of Mercy and all nations in Nogales, Sonora.

By my side was for several years, squatters lived at the former community center.

But sister Anjelika Alma Macías sent a bi national group of supporters purchased the property last year.

They opened La Casa and word soon spread, especially as other shelters were shutting down due to the pandemic, Sister Lika as she is affectionately called, is from central Mexico but has been helping people in this border region for decades.

Spanish Language not one person that has been here has told me that he or she is embarking on this journey out of pleasure or because they just want to live somewhere else.

They are desperate.

I met a 14 year old Mexican boy whose father and uncle had been shot and killed and the criminals made him pick up the bodies and move them away.

The suffering is constant services at La Casa include three meals a day, places to sleep and shower and education for the children.

Little friendly realize how much of the work gets done by the migrants themselves, including plumbing projects, an outdoor cooking area where special events are also held and a thriving garden La Casa is supported by Gusano, Fronteras or Crossing Borders.

Cassandra Fronteras gets donations from members of the United Church of Christ Lutherans Episcopalians and other groups in Arizona.

Reverend Randy Meyer leads the Good Shepherd Church in Sarita, south of Tucson.

From our faith perspective, we really see that these are sisters and brothers, and they may be across human made border, but really in the bigger scheme of things, they're really part of humanity.

They're part of our churches, and we need to love them and take care of them.

Maria is in her fifties and sold her own home and property in Guatemala for about $15,000 so she could pay for her family's trip North She's traveling with her 12 year old son, 23 year old daughter and her daughter's two children.

They want to get to Virginia.

Maria has a friend there who is willing to take in the family until they get established in the States.

Spanish Language I faced many difficulties in my journey for six days.

I experienced humiliation, contempt, rejection, discrimination and theft.

We were often scared and hungry and thirsty.

On the sixth day bus ride up here.

But it's better than what we faced in Guatemala.

We had to take a chance Abigail and Maria's families both arrived at the border last year when former President Trump's migrant protection protocols, or NPP, were in effect It stipulated that those seeking political asylum do so while waiting in Mexico.

That policy is no longer enforced.

In February, the Biden administration rolled out a plan to begin processing people with active cases, allowing them to await their immigration court dates in the U.S. Abigail and Maria's families are waiting to find out when they can finally be processed.

They are praying it works out Spanish Language Our main objective is to present our case to U.S. immigration.

We've been waiting for months and will continue to wait because we want to do this the right way.

It's too risky to enter through the desert illegally with our little girls.

And even if we made it, we would have to live in fear again due to our undocumented status.

Joy.

Trouble.

How to let me be lying.

What my life I have worked all of my life doing laundry, cleaning, ironing and cooking to help out my family.

And I keep asking God to grant me the opportunity to reach our destination where I will do it again.

My main goal is to help my family.

It used to be a circular immigration pattern, and we've created these walls and these policies that almost lock people in.

Spanish Language Making the gospel come to life.

It's one thing to read it and another to put it into practice.

That is my satisfaction to do what I have to do.

I can die tomorrow and ask myself, what did I do with my life that was worth it.

That is my daily question.

What did I do that was worthwhile?

Yes.

AZPM final Murrow came in the feature reporting category.

Producer Cáit Nísíomón and photographer John de Soto visited the Basis charter school in Oro Valley in 2020 to look at the physical and mental toll that covered was having on students, parents and teachers.

The following is an excerpt from school in the time of COVID19 Everywhere style of kid that we get a basis as a kid that is is very, very motivated.

The workload here is can be rather daunting and you want again the challenge is that having this hybrid model where half are here and half hour presents challenges that nobody ever really thought of.

I mean, we're in uncharted territory.

You know, something seems to always go wrong.

Hand out a second time honor as much as we try to deliver the same learning experience to kids at home that are here.

It's just it can't happen in my in my mind.

They're going to be missing something.

We can see here that the other members of the class are watching the same slide, trying to document the lines.

But like in their day to day lives, I just wish it was integrated better.

I can't switch back and forth fast enough to see who online, if their hands are raised, makes it difficult for me to kind of manage who I'm talking to in person with online.

We got back in school in I believe it was October 12th.

It was awesome because I'm someone who relies on my friends a lot and I will hang out with them.

And it's a big mental like just.

Yes.

And it was weird just not being able to do that every day.

That's it for you.

Wonder at what point, you know, keeping up this level of energy keeping up this level of worry is going to become unsustainable.

And that's kind of the word that I think of when I think of hybrid learning.

There's no cadre of teachers backed up to to support these teachers or to support these kids when they decide that's enough.

And we've already lost quite a few, you know, due to the stress of hybrid learning.

And there's nobody there waiting to take that job over.

You know, nobody's like, Hey, I want to be a teacher.

I have kids who when you mention that we might be going back into virtual learning completely, they just want to cry and then I have kids who are begging for it.

It's frustrating to watch kids that, you know, are in pain.

And it could be that school is their social place.

Maybe they're an only child.

It could be that they are queer and at home they're not out, but at school they are.

And they're losing that opportunity to spend their day out and proud.

It could be that maybe nobody is home with them.

I have a lot of really lonely kids looking at me through a computer screen because mom and dad are at work and they're just home with a screen all day long.

You know, I know a lot of kids who go from class to nap to class to nap, and you don't want to drop the D word of depression, but that certainly is what it feels like.

So I've been out home schooling since March, so I don't really get to go outside much.

They're almost in the house during the entire week, on the weekends.

Sometimes I'll go over to my friend's house, but rarely are my my grades now aren't as good as as far as being in person because I'm just not understanding it.

Well, Mark and maybe some being showed me physically with online school, I feel like they're giving us like twice as much homework as they would.

So as soon as I'm done with school, I'm usually studying or doing homework til 9:00.

We look at the jump on water under a microscope most of the time.

At the beginning I was on the screen for about 12 hours a day straight and my eyes started getting strained, but I wouldn't get glasses for blue light because I don't really get I don't get overwhelmed, but it's very stressful for my eyes.

Membrane Region Bistro.

Ethan, sweetie, how can I help you?

My mom is a high risk individual.

She has both asthma and diabetes.

So we made the decision as a family that I would just stay at home.

Back in March, when we first started, I was definitely very stressed and anxious and I was little worried about how AP tests were going to be before they announced it was going to be online.

And also the fact that I was going to be taking my SAT and retakes and I thought back then it was like the determining factor for like college admissions.

So I was very stressed.

Online learning and distance learning in general just needs a lot of discipline and so I feel that I should just continue like a regular track of graduating and just entering freshman year because for me, I know myself, I'm going to end up getting, I think, either discouraged or distracted and not wanting to continue.

So I think that it would be best for me to just go ahead and jump into college.

Kids are inundated today.

I mean, you know, they're so connected that I, I can't think of that many kids that aren't aware of what's going on locally, nationally and globally.

I think it's a really hard time to be a parent.

You know, it really, really is because you want you want to make everything better and it's just it's not feasible you know, what I can do for my kids and kids here is provide them with some tools that will hopefully get them get them through this.

And to the other side but now we're switching to talk about perceptions.

This generation is better so that they are more aware of mental health.

They're more comfortable admitting their anxieties.

So if anybody could handle it, it's Gen Z.

They are some of the most innovative, hopeful groups of students I've met.

And I think their own awareness of mental health issues can be translated and carried out to their parents, to teachers.

We could all learn from them and their willingness to talk about it.

They still have hope for the future.

We have given them crap and they are completely OK with saying, Yeah, this is what it is, but we're going to make it better.

And so then I start to feel better.

And so just remembering that our youth are our biggest asset by far, and they're amazing and and taking comfort in that thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom MacNamara, and we'll see you next week.