Organization After the Atlanta Shooting

On Tuesday, March 16th, 2021, a mass shooter murdered eight people, six of whom were Asian women. Their names were Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng and Paul Andre Michels. There were multiple protests nationwide following this shooting in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, New York City, Columbus where diverse groups of people came together to demand change, to speak out, and to heal. Many have connected this incident to long-held anti-AHPID sentiments, especially during the COVID pandemic, lax gun control in the US, and the combination of racism and misogyny leading to violence. There have been many racially motivated mass shootings in hate crimes recently, such as the Oak Creek shooting in Wisconsin where six people were killed in their Sikh temple. While media attention varies from violent incident to violent incident, AHPID communities have always spoken out and demanded an end to racially motivated violence and white supremacy.

            A protest of around 200 people, including OSU students, gathered in Bicentennial Park in Columbus on Saturday, March 20th to decry the increase in violence against Asians and Asian Americans. Howard Fei, a third year OSU student, told the Lantern that he had racial slurs yelled at him on campus. Another student, Isabella Guinigundo, who is a member of OPAWL, said, “What we need to go forward is solidarity. And I’m not talking about some sort of statement against hate crimes. I’m talking about real, substantial, tangible solidarity… It’s our duty to fight for our freedom, and our duty to win. We must love and support each other; we have nothing to lose but our chains.”

            There were other gatherings in Columbus that weekend. On that same Saturday, March 20th, 2021, I spoke at a vigil held for the victims of this shooting in Goodale Park, Columbus. This vigil was organized by the Anak Bayan not C*lumbus, a chapter of the comprehensive national democratic mass organization of Filipinx youth and students in the US. They fight for education, jobs, rights, social services, and eradicating imperialism feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism in the Philippines. They also stand in solidarity with international youth struggles. Many OSU students attended, and the crowds were diverse and active participants in the event. Here is what I said:

            “White supremacy, as institution, makes hate become words which become threats… which become violence… which becomes normalized, accepted. The first time I was sexualized I must have been 11 years old. And since then, like for many Asian women, it’s been near constant. And in our hearts, I think we remember each threat, each searing stare, each judgment. Today it burns in my throat, this anger for the women who lost their lives for no reason other than the whims of a racist white man. Because we have always been subject to those whims. And yet we have not shared our own stories of abuse, of objectification because we did not think anyone would listen. Over the past year we have all had premonitions of what was to come with the rise of anti-Asian violence because of COVID-19. But we have known exactly what white supremacists are capable of for a long time, and how vehemently they will defend their friends. But I’m here to say that they underestimate what we are capable of. The solidarity we share. And the voices we have always had. I found my voice writing this poem, and I hope you can too. This is called ‘to know.’”

            Protests at OSU have continued. On April 2nd, 2021, over 100 students gathered outside of Thompson Library on campus to stop Asian hate and end white violence. The protest was organized by Stop Hate OSU, a team of students who came together following the Atlanta shooting. More specifically, students were asking the university “to increase funding to support Asian and Pacific Islander (API) students on campus, implement systematic education that addresses white supremacy and the histories of the API community, increase representation on decision-making bodies that are responsive to student needs, disaggregate all API data and the category of ‘Asian’ on all Ohio State records to the country [of] origin and increase funding to promote the safety of API students while decreasing the role of the police,” according to the Lantern.

Organization After the Atlanta Shooting