Victoria Cassinova was born in 1993 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, more than 1,800 miles from Los Angeles and a year after the city was wrought with one of the most devastating civil disturbances in modern U.S. history. Tensions between the Black and Korean communities were already bubbling beneath the surface. It erupted when a Korean-born shopkeeper was placed only on probation for fatally shooting 15-year-old Latasha Harlins after accusing her of stealing a bottle of orange juice. In the decades since she was killed, the dominant visual memory of Latasha has been of her final moments, captured on a grainy security video. But in 2020, Victoria was commissioned by Netflix to paint a mural of Latasha to change that. Victoria worked closely with the Harlins family to showcase who Latasha was as a person. On January 2021, what would have been Latasha’s 44th birthday, the city unveiled the first public mural of Harlins at the Algin Sutton Recreation Center on Hoover Street. It’s a place where Latasha and her cousin spent most of their time. Thirty years later, Cassinova’s artwork serves as a bold advocate for social justice.
Justin Chon was 11 when the L.A. riots erupted. Though he was young, the experience left a deep impression on him, especially when his father’s shoe store was looted on the last day of the uprising. In the past 30 years, documentarians have made a number of films and shows revolving around the uprising, but to Chon, they didn’t seem to fully represent the Korean American perspective he encountered as a child. In 2017, Chon produced “Gook,” a deeply personal film that takes inspiration from his feelings as a young boy witnessing his city burn. Chon is now the director of the drama series “Pachinko,” based on the highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling novel by the same name. He is a vocal advocate for the Asian American community.
