WHERE CAN WE COMMUNE IF WE FEAR OUR SOCIAL SPACES?

What should have been a joyful, festive gathering celebrating the start of the Lunar New Year has left our communities devastated yet again. The Monterey Park dance hall shooting on Jan. 21 this Lunar New Year has left Asians and Asian Americans with a familiar sense of fear. Monterey Park is a suburb of Los Angeles with over 60,000 people, 65 percent of whom are Asian, and many of whom are of Chinese descent. It is an “ethnic enclave” that, according to University of San Francisco history professor James Zarsadiaz, is historically tied to antiAsian discrimination, a city that was forced into being because Asian people were pushed out of other cities.

But recent events have shown that antiAsian acts of violence persist. In March 2021, eight people, six of whom were Asian, were gunned down in the Atlanta area at their places of work. Less than 48 hours after the Monterey Park tragedy, seven people were killed in Half Moon Bay at their jobs. Many of these people were Chinese farm workers.

Attacks on our communities are happening in larger settings and in everyday spaces.

Barely a few days before the Monterey Park shooting, an 18-year old Asian student in Indiana was stabbed while traveling on a bus because she appeared “Chinese.” Court documents say that the alleged assailant told police it “would be one less person to blow up our country.”

This violence is happening to community members who are celebrating, surviving in a historic time of inflation and working as part of the economic fabric of this nation.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Asian Americans have been targeted, harassed and attacked — in their neighborhoods, outside their families’ homes, at their own doorsteps and inside their apartments. Fear has become part of our daily lives.

While some of these attacks appear in the media, the truth is that violence against Asians and Asian Americans has largely been made invisible. The stereotype of the model minority has created a facade that denies Asian Americans a deeper existence, an existence that downplays the racism and xenophobic discrimination being experienced.

That the Monterey Park shooting occurred at the start of the Lunar Year, a day of profound importance to many Asian Americans,

a day to celebrate with loved ones, is a testament to the intimacy of anti-Asian violence. That the shooting occurred in a dance hall while people were commemorating a new beginning is an indication of the ways violence shows up on our doorsteps — to disturb the very expression of community, celebration and joy associated with the Asian American experience in the United States and globally. Where can our people commune with each other if social spaces become places to fear?

Within these tragedies are the compounded layers of violence that agonize Asian and Asian American communities. We need efforts to acknowledge and heal from the effects of patriarchy, imperialism, capitalism, displacement and mental health stigma. We need efforts to build solidarity, to fund our basic needs, and to heal from intergenerational trauma and gender-based violence.

As a grassroots movement-building organization, we at Asian Solidarity Collective believe that, together, we can keep us safe. Our community has been conditioned to believe that police officers are our only hope for safety, and, at this moment, it’s so easy to latch onto hashtags and state-promoted solutions. But we can lean into our solidarity practices and question how the police truly kept us safe.

Ask the families of Dennis Carolino, Angelo Quinto, Dr. Yan Li, Tortuguita, Tyre Nichols and so many who suffered because of lives taken as a result of encounters with police. What we need in this time is building supportive relationships, mutual aid and community care practices cultivated by our own ancestors and Black, Indigenous, disabled, queer, transgender and two-spirit peoples.

We must work together in ending oppressive violence in all its forms. We urge our leaders to support community-led responses and approaches with justice at the forefront. When our most vulnerable community members are targeted, solidarity is the pathway forward. As community organizers, we move with the understanding that our freedom is tied together and that through solidarity we will find collective liberation.

All members of the Asian Solidarity Collective share these sentiments.