Tag: Abolition

Remembering Konerak Sinthasomphone

Konerak Sinthasomphone

By Guest Contributor: Anna M. Moncada Storti

Content Note: Explicit mention of events of child m*lest*tion, s*xual violence, anti-Asian murder & violence, anti-Black murder & violence

Spring brings renewal, so they say. A much needed reprieve after the year we’ve all endured, this season of new beginnings, however, asks us to do more than reemerge. In the United States, May is recognized as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month. Our previous calendar month was also designated as Abolition May by the Cops off Campus Coalition. The call to embrace AAPI heritage and the call for abolition have more in common than one may think. 

Like many scholars, I’ve devoted time this May to teaching and learning about the specific relations between anti-Asian violence, anti-Blackness, and abolition. Shifting into Pride month, the task remains. As I imagine liberation for all, I hold Konerak Sinthasomphone in my memory, and you should too. 

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100+ Asian and LGBTQ Organizations’ Statement in Opposition to Law Enforcement-Based Hate Crime Legislation

FILE - In this March 13, 2021, file photo, Chinese-Japanese American student Kara Chu, 18, holds a pair of heart balloons decorated by herself for the rally "Love Our Communities: Build Collective Power" to raise awareness of anti-Asian violence outside the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

By Guest Contributor: 100+ Asian American and LGBTQ Organizations

We, the undersigned Asian and LGBTQ organizations, reject hate crime legislation that relies on anti-Black, law enforcement responses to the recent rise in anti-Asian bias incidents across the US.

In the same week the verdict in George Floyd’s murder was announced, footage of the killing of Adam Toledo was released, one week after Daunte Wright was killed by the police, and countless others experienced violence at the hands of law enforcement, Asian communities celebrated the passage of S.937, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act in the US Senate.

While we wish we could celebrate the historic visibility of anti-Asian violence and racism, which is as old as the colonization of the Americas, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act contradicts Asian solidarity with Black, Brown, undocumented, trans, low-income, sex worker, and other marginalized communities whose liberation is bound together. Furthermore, the bolstering of law enforcement and criminalization does not keep us safe and in fact harms and furthers violence against Asian communities facing some of the greatest disparities and attacks – sex workers, low wage workers, people with disabilities, people living with HIV, youth, women, trans and non binary people, migrants amongst others. It also ignores that police violence is also anti-Asian violence, which has disproportionately targeted Black and Brown Asians. We uplift the names of Christian Hall and Angelo Quinto, Asian Americans who were recently killed by police during mental health crises.

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