March 19, 2021
We have witnessed the horrific rise in anti-Asian discrimination and violence, fueled by abhorrent xenophobia throughout the past year. We are deeply saddened and frustrated by the recent murder of eight people in Atlanta in a blatant act of racist violence.
To our friends and colleagues in the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community: we stand with you in solidarity. We join you in your mourning and frustration. We want to emphasize that it isn’t your responsibility to educate your non-AAPI colleagues on this or other issues facing your community or “put on a brave face” for the sake of their comfort.
For our non-AAPI colleagues and community members, here are tangible ways you can support your colleagues without taking the focus away from them:
Step Up: Equity Matter’s commitment to fighting against systemic injustices and bridging inequities in opportunity and access galvanizes our condemnation of racism in any form it takes. It includes denouncing the disparagement of the victims’ personal lives and the conversation around these women’s work. Roxane Gay said it best:
“As the discourse proceeds, people will try to derail the conversation by talking about the nature of the women’s work in the three massage parlors where they were murdered as if their lives somehow matter less if they are sex workers. Sex work is work. Their lives matter. We have to stand up for them. We have to learn all their names. We have to do everything we can to ensure that this wave of violence ends here and now. And, while we’re at it, we need to protect sex workers with more than empty, self-serving rhetoric about human trafficking as if all sex workers are trafficked and merely saying the phrase “human trafficking,” is activism. It is not.”
Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Soon C. Park, Hyun J. Grant, Suncha Kim, and Yong A. Yue deserve justice. There is no place for judgment of them. Be aware of how events like these can dehumanize the victims. Stand together by honoring the needs of AAPI colleagues, friends, and family. Let them have agency over their grief and lead the triumph over racial violence.
Speak up, stand up, step up!
Freedom Inc. works to achieve social justice through coupling direct services with leadership development and community organizing that will bring about social, political, cultural, and economic change resulting in the end of violence against women, gender-non-conforming and transgender folks, and children within communities of color.
Hmong American Women’s Association
HAWA is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1993 by a group of thirteen community women who had a strong passion to advocate, organize and share concerns reflected by women in the larger Hmong community.
Formed in 1986 by ten founders who believed in empowering and educating the Hmong and other Southeast Asian communities, WUCMAA’s efforts have been able to provide various programs to help support families for over 30 years.
AAPI Progressive Action works to empower Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, connect AAPI communities and their leaders, and promote awareness and action for progressive AAPI causes.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice
AAAJ’s mission is to advance civil and human rights for Asian Americans and to build and promote a fair and equitable society for all.
National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum
NAPAWF works to build a movement for social, political, and structural change for Asian American and Pacific Islander women and girls.
A grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers, Red Canary Song organizes transnationally to base-build with migrant workers through a labor rights framework and mutual aid.
The center tracks and responds to incidents of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning, and child bullying against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States.
Chinese for Affirmative Action
CAA advocates for systemic change that protects immigrant rights, promotes language diversity and remedies racial and social injustice.
A toolkit for addressing anti-Asian bias, discrimination, and hate.
Bystander Intervention Training (Online)
Advancing Justice | Chicago is partnering with New York-based nonprofit Hollaback! and CAIR-Chicago to plan and implement an aggressive scaling up of locally-led bystander hate incident intervention trainings for community members.