Racism in this country is a public health emergency. One week ago, 8 people, including 6 Asian-American women, were murdered in Atlanta in a violent attack. Soon Chung Park, age 74, Hyun Jung Grant, age 51, Suncha Kim, age 69, Yong Yue, age 63, Delaina Ahley Yaun, age 33, Paul Andre Michels, age 54, Xiaojie Tan, age 49, and Daoyou Feng, age 44, were taken away from their kids and their partners and their friends. Let us remember their names and remember them. You can learn a bit more about these individuals here.

  

One of the cruelest realities of a hate crime is that in addition to the tragedy wreaked on the immediate victims and their families, hate crimes convey to others who share the targeted identity that they too are not safe, that they too are not welcome, that they too do not belong.

It is our responsibility, as the Amherst Survival Center community, to actively demonstrate to our AAPI* neighbors that you are a part of us. To show our AAPI neighbors that you matter. To convey our deep appreciation and value for all the ways that you enrich and enliven and strengthen our community. It is our collective responsibility, to make sure you, our AAPI neighbors, are safe.

We can do this by consistently upholding our code of conduct, not allowing racist rhetoric or behavior on our site. We can do this by ensuring access for speakers of many languages. We can do this by increasing the availability of culturally appropriate foods. We can do this by listening and learning and improving our feedback processes. We can do this by always questioning our practices against our values of fairness and equity. We can do this by celebrating and centering the many rich cultural heritages that make up the Center’s community. We can do this by continuing to prioritize our organization’s anti-racism work.

We join in solidarity with our AAPI neighbors. We join in heartache. Violence and hate crimes directed at our AAPI community members are not unfamiliar. The stark rise in these attacks this last year, fueled by anti-Asian racist rhetoric, is unacceptable.

To all of our AAPI community members, we see you. To all of our non AAPI community members, let us learn and take action together. There are many lists, such as this one and this one, circulating with concrete strategies you can take to address anti-Asian bias and violence, as well as AAPI-led organizations you can support financially right now. StopAAPIhate.org provides a tool for reporting hate incidents and many helpful anti-racism resources. If you’d like to learn more about the not-often-taught history of anti-Asian violence in the US, this is a helpful introductory resource, and Lok Su, Associate Professor at UC Berkley speaks more to this here. 

As always, if free food would be helpful to you or your family, or provide a bit of ease as you care for yourself and your loved ones, we are here. You can find information about free meals, daily produce, and a full grocery shop below, ore reach out and let us know what you need.

Thanks for being a part of our community,

Lev Ben-Ezra

Executive Director