Angry about the murder of eight people – including six Asian American women – At three massage companies in the Atlanta area, Columbus residents, Linh Ta, Miki Gotoh and others, called for community action and solidarity on Tuesday.
Suspect Robert Aaron Long, a 21-year-old from Woodstock, Georgia, has been charged with multiple murders and aggravated assault. Authorities are still investigating whether this was a hate crime.
After the shootings, 45-year-old Gotoh and 44-year-old Ta organized a rally to mourn the lives of those involved in the massacre and to highlight the orientation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) during the COVID-19 pandemic .
The CommUNITY Collective #StopAsianHate event starts on Saturday at 10:30 am in Bicentennial Park along Scioto Mile. Asian Pacific Islander’s American Public Affairs Association (APAPA) and the Ohio Chinese American Association partnered with Ta and Gotoh on the initiative.
Ta said the hope is to forge various community members for the rally, not just members of the Asian community.
“It’s not just about Asians, we want solidarity in Columbus,” she said.
Gotoh said Tuesday’s shootings reflected the increase in anti-Asian acts.
“It’s a real fear that I might be hunted for looking like I do,” she said.
On Tuesday, Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit tracking cases of hatred and discrimination against AAPI members, was released Data Nearly 3,800 anti-Asian hate incidents were reported from March 19, 2020 to February 28. Women made up about 68%, men were 29% of the respondents. And since the beginning of 2021, the organization has reported more than 500 racially motivated hate attacks.
When asked about the local increase in Asian American attacks earlier this month, a Columbus police spokesman said the department was not aware of any increase in incidents.
Sam Shim, founder of the AAPI Caucus of the Ohio Democratic Party and the Asian and Pacific Islander Alumni Society at Ohio State University, said these attacks were largely immortalized by the country’s political leaders.
Over the past few weeks, Asian Americans have been questioning how to deal with a recent wave of assaults – many on the elderly – that coincided with the pandemic. The virus was first identified in China, and former President Donald Trump and others have used racist terms to describe it.
With that rhetoric, Shim said it had led to an increase in these targeted attacks.
“Many people are unaware of the level of anti-Asian hatred and xenophobia in the country,” he said. “It’s important to let our entire community know that these actions are taking place everywhere.”
While anti-Asian attacks have increased during the pandemic, Dublin-based Dr. Anita Somani said they happened long before the outbreak.
The 58-year-old Somani, originally from India, reflected on past hate crimes such as the 2015 shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and the rise in xenophobia after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The Dublin resident also criticized the authorities investigating the Atlanta massacre, citing a comment from Jay Baker, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s captain, who said of the shooter, “It was a really bad day for him.” The comment appeared to be a “passport” that could lead to similar events in the future. Baker is no longer a spokesman for the case.
“It implicitly gives people permission to keep hating,” Somani said. “It gives them the idea that it’s okay to do these things because I am white.”
Given the damage white supremacists and other hate groups have wreaked in the country, Somani said these tragedies are calling for minority groups to come together.
“When you start splitting groups, it gets more frequent,” she said. “I think that as people of color we all need to come together as a larger community to protest effectively or find solutions to end racism.”
In light of the overwhelming wave of racism and hate crimes black, Latino and other minorities face, Vincent Wang, who serves as the national president of APAPA and chairman of the OCAA, said they must come together to spread messages of peace and hope .
“At this moment we should condemn the violence and improve understanding of each other’s pain,” said Wang. “We stand together in this challenge and must stand together instead of tearing each other down.”
Shim said the formation of events like the COMMUNITY Collective and others is important in forging this widespread effort that will lead to the end of these racial attacks.
“Silence is not an option,” he said. “We need our allies to speak everywhere. It shouldn’t just come from the Asian community, it should come from all Americans.”
While Ta and Gotoh were still planning the rally on Saturday, they said the gathering of community members and officials will be necessary for action points and long-term progress.
“It’s not a one-time event, this conversation needs to be continued,” said Ta. “So let’s open the dialogue so it can continue.”
@Earl_Hopkins
The Associated Press contributed to this story
