12-year-olds organize anti-hate rally
Protest against racism against Asian Americans draws over 1,000 people
More than 1,000 people gathered Sunday for a rally and a march organized by middle school students to protest racism against the Asian American community. The crowd was spurred on by the young people to denounce hatred and a recent spate of violent attacks.
Protesters from multiple racial backgrounds at Berkeley’s Aquatic Park participated in chants and listened to an array of speakers, including Mina Fedor, a seventh-grade student at Black Pine Circle school who organized the event through social media.
Mina, 12, said she was moved to act after seeing intolerance and hatred grow over the past year, as xenophobia combined with racist rhetoric around the origins of the coronavirus epidemic resulted in public attacks
on Asian Americans.
She told the crowd that she had been “hearing about it more, and the stories keep getting worse and worse,” she said. “Kids walking to school with sticks to protect themselves and the elderly afraid to go out for their safety.”
She and a handful of classmates launched a grassroots campaign that shows how young voices are playing a bigger role in the national conversation about racism.
“This is such a special, emotional day,” Berkeley City Council member Rigel Robinson said in an interview before speaking to the crowd. “To see these seventh graders leading this gives me so much hope for the future.”
Robinson, 24, who said he was the youngest-ever voted to Berkeley’s City Council, said he was heartened because “these incredible kids are not only passionate about the issues of discrimination against Asian Americans, but they see the part all of this plays in the fight for racial justice.”
The students, all 12 years old, have created a website at AAPIYouthRising.org to combat hatred beyond the positive environment fostered by the rally.
“By bringing it up, it can have more influence,” said Vee Norton Tsang, one of Mina’s friends.
The Berkeley demonstration also highlighted a strong response to a rising trend of violence against Asian Americans. Scores of rallies have been held across the country after weeks of increasing reports of attacks, leading up to the shooting on March 16 that left eight people — six of them Asian-American women — dead at spas in and around Atlanta.
Between March 2020 and February 2021, Stop AAPI Hate received reports of 3,795 hate incidents throughout the country — including 1,691 in California and 142 in Santa Clara County, according to the group. Verbal harassment made up 68.1% of the incidents and shunning another 20.5%, the report said. Physical assault comprised 11.1% of the incidents.
The weekend saw a number of area rallies to call attention to hate crimes and attacks on the Asian community, with events held in San Francisco, Redwood City, Cupertino, Dublin and Fremont. The Berkeley students also got support from Ashlyn So, a 13-year-old seventh grader at Burlingame Intermediate School, who organized a rally in February at San Mateo’s Central Park that drew hundreds of demonstrators.
Russell Mark Jeung, chair of the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University, said young people are standing up for their rights after being victims of increasing harassment and violence.
“It is touching them so personally,” said Jeung, who helped start Stop AAPI Hate.
“They are living in a Black Lives Matter era. They can sense the anxiety and fear Asian Americans are feeling at the moment after the Atlanta shootings. I see young people overall more politically engaged. So it makes sense to see Asian Americans involved.”
Jueng said the dominant feeling of youth is anger.
“They see their grandparents’ lives not mattering,” he said in a phone interview. “They are disappointed that this nation doesn’t live up to its ideals.”
The Berkeley students said their parents and grandparents support their campaign in addressing issues that have been part of their American experience.
Robinson, the Berkeley council member, recalled that his city was the birthplace of the Asian American Political Alliance, a group that sought to unite all Asian Americans in the 1960s.
“That legacy is alive and well today and it lives on in these seventh grade girls who are so much more organized than any other rally I’ve ever been in my life,” he said.
After listening to about a dozen speakers, the demonstrators holding homemade placards marched to a pedestrian bridge over Interstate 80, drawing attention from hundreds of passing motorists.
Another anti-hate rally organized by Berkeley High School students is scheduled for Friday in Oakland.
“We don’t want this to be a moment, we want this to be a movement,” Jueng said.