President, VP offer solace in Atlanta
Biden, Harris visit Atlanta and urge US to reject bigotry
“Hate can have no safe harbor in America,” Joe Biden said Friday, days after a white gunman killed eight people, most of them Asian American women.
ATLANTA — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris offered solace to Asian Americans and a reeling nation on Friday as they visited Atlanta just days after a white gunman killed eight people, most of them Asian American women.
The visit, during a nationwide spike of anti-Asian violence, has added resonance with the presence of Harris, the first person of South Asian descent to hold national office. And it comes as Biden on Friday expressed support for the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, a bill that would strengthen the government’s reporting and response to hate crimes and provide resources to Asian American communities.
“Hate can have no safe harbor in America,” Biden said, calling on Americans to stand up to bigotry when they see it. “Our silence is complicity. We cannot be complicit.”
Biden said “it was heart wrenching to listen to” Asian American state legislators and other community leaders discuss living in fear of violence during their meeting before he and Harris delivered remarks at Emory University.
“Racism is real in America. And it has always been. Xenophobia is real in America, and always has been. Sexism, too,” said Harris. “The president and I will not be silent. We will not stand by. We will always speak out against violence, hate crimes and discrimination, wherever and whenever it occurs.”
Their trip was planned before the shooting, as part of a victory lap aimed at selling the benefits of pandemic relief legislation. But Biden and Harris instead are spending much of their visit consoling a community whose growing voting power helped secure their victory in Georgia and beyond.
Activists have seen a rise of racist attacks. Nearly 3,800 incidents have been reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a California-based reporting center for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and its partner advocacy groups, since March 2020.
Biden and Harris both implicitly criticized former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus.”
“For the last year we’ve had people in positions of incredible power scapegoating Asian Americans,” said Harris. “People with the biggest pulpits, spreading this kind of hate.”
‘We’ve always known words have consequences,” Biden said. “It is the ‘coronavirus.’ Full stop.”
As the investigation into the shootings Tuesday night continued, it was revealed that two of the spa businesses that were attacked had been repeatedly targeted in police prostitution investigations over the years, raising questions about the mayor’s earlier comments that the spas operated legally.
Police records show officers went to the businesses at least 21 times in the past 10 years, which appears to contradict Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ statement that officers in her city had not been to the businesses beyond a minor potential theft and they were not “on the radar” of police. Bottoms added that she did not want to blame the victims.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, is charged with killing four women at the Atlanta spas and four other people inside a massage business 30 miles away in Cherokee County.
According to police records released by the city Friday, 12 people were arrested at the two Atlanta massage businesses on prostitution charges, but none since 2013. Almost all the arrests came in undercover stings where an officer paid for a massage and an employee offered sex or a sex act for more money. The reports were first obtained by The Washington Post.
All three businesses where Long killed people Tuesday have detailed recent reviews on an online site that leads users to places that provide sexual services.
Authorities released the names of the Atlanta victims hours before Biden and Harris arrived in Atlanta.
Soon C. Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong A. Yue, 63, were shot in the head, the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said. Suncha Kim, 69, died from a gunshot to the chest, authorities said.
Three of the women died at the Gold Spa in Atlanta, while the fourth woman died across the street at Aromatherapy Spa.
The medical examiner didn’t immediately say which woman died at Aromatherapy.
Four people were killed and a fifth wounded at Young’s Asian Massage near Woodstock, in Atlanta’s northwestern suburbs.
Cherokee County authorities earlier identified the dead there as Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Daoyou Feng, 44; and Xiaojie Tan, 49, who owned Young’s.
As he boarded Air Force One on Friday morning, Biden stumbled several times up the stairs to the aircraft, before saluting the military officer who greeted him on the tarmac. White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said later Biden was “doing 100% fine.”