Vigil draws attention to attacks on Asian Americans
College student says she endured ‘disturbing incident’ at market in New Canaan
NEW CANAAN — About 100 people gathered Wednesday evening at Saxe Middle School after a local college student says she was insulted because of her Asian heritage while shopping in town.
While home on spring break last week, Rebecca Serven said a “disturbing incident” happened when a woman approached her at Walter Stewart’s Market.
“While shopping in New Canaan, I was faced with a woman who said in addition to other things: go back to where you came from. Go spread COVID-19 somewhere else. I don’t need people like you giving me COVID. And, I didn’t know that people like you were allowed to shop in New Canaan,” the college student wrote in a letter read by her mother, Susan Serven, during the vigil.
In an interview afterward, Susan Serven
It “feels like you are being hunted. Like all of us have a target on our backs.” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong
said Doug Stewart, of Walter Stewart’s Market, “reached out immediately” when he heard about the incident.
Rebecca Serven has returned to school at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and did not attend the vigil, which was coordinated by the New Canaan Asian American and Pacific Islander and Stand Together Against Racism.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong spoke at the vigil, which was held to raise awareness of the racism against the Asian American community.
Tong said when he walks outside, it “feels like you are being hunted. Like all of us have a target on our backs.”
“It is beyond disconcerting, and scary and disorienting,” Tong added.
Susan Serven said she co-founded the nonprofit Chinese Language of Connecticut to help her two adopted daughters of Chinese heritage assimilate.
“I continue to hope that more people will treat these cases as learning opportunities where we as people consciously decide to do better, to be better,” Rebecca Serven’s letter read. “Where we, as people, decide to show support to extend our compassion, our empathy and treat each others as our neighbors, as many of us are.”
“Because in times of adversary it is the support of our communities, whether they are comprised of friends, families, peers, colleagues, neighbors or strangers that has the ability
to uplift us all,” Rebecca Serven wrote.
Fatou Niang Fatou, founder of STAR who organized the event, said “when anyone that is affected by the pandemic of racism it affects the whole community, so it is about
time we all stop being bystanders.”
This vigil was in response to racist violence against Asian American people, including an incident in New York where a man kicked a 65-year-old Filipino woman to the
ground while making antiAsian insults this week. There were also references made to the attacks in Atlanta, where eight people were killed, six of Asian descent, during a series of shooting at three spas on March 16.
“This has been a very hard week,” Tong said, referring two incidents in New York City where a young man was beaten on the subway and an AsianAmerican woman was kicked to the ground.
Seventh-grader Frank
Hu, whose parents are from Wuhan, China, said he is “no less an American than anyone else.”
“Through unity, we will achieve justice, and justice is something that our country doesn’t have right now,” Hu said.