SALSA logo, with text underneath reading “South Asian Law Student Association at CUNY Law.”
CUNY’s South Asian Law Student Association (SALSA) stands in complete and full solidarity with APALSA, Asian-Americans, migrant workers, and sex workers across the nation who have been feeling the historical violence of America from recent news today. Not enough has been done to protect Asian Americans from the heightened levels of hate, discrimination, and violence. Concrete action must be taken now for our Asian family, friends, comrades, and loved ones. We stand in solidarity with the 8 people, including the 6 Asian women who were murdered by a white supremacist last night. This was a targeted anti-Asian attack with the 21-year-old white man saying he wanted to “kill all the Asians.”
We want to highlight how this is not new – this is a historical very colonial American pattern of white supremacy murders. Chinese immigrants have been used as scapegoats for disease, considered a people whose “habits and manner of life are of such character as to breed and engender disease whether they reside,” as one San Francisco health inspection officer wrote in 1873. Public Health Departments throughout the West Coast accused Asians of bringing diseases ranging from leprosy to malaria to the area. In the early 1900s, officials quarantined San Francisco’s Chinatown, convinced that its Asian residents had seeded a bubonic plague outbreak.
Jeung, an Asian American history professor at San Francisco State University, predicted the current wave of racism as soon as he heard about COVID-19. “Whenever an epidemic comes from Asia, Asians are scapegoated and are met with interpersonal violence and racist policies,” he said. Unfortunately, such hate crimes against Asian Americans are generally not reported and are invisible to major media outlets. No one should fear for their life because of what they look like, who they are, or where they come from. SALSA stands in solidarity with our APALSA classmates and will continue to fight against racism in all its insidious forms.
We demand respect and a dignified livelihood for all sex workers and all migrant workers. We acknowledge the targeted attacks and stand in full wholehearted solidarity with our Asian-American communities. As students right now in legal education, we stand to use these tools alongside the community to abolish oppressive systems with an anti-racist lens – together we are stronger!
More Resources:
Asian American Community Resource
Stand Against Hate: Report hate crimes via Asian Americans Advancing Justice (this website is available in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese)
Chinese Progressive Organization
National Organization of Asians and Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual Violence
In Solidarity,
CUNY’s South Asian Law Students Association (SALSA)