As violent attacks on Asian Americans, many of them elders, increase across the nation amid the coronavirus and economic crises and the still-frothing wake of racist rhetoric from former President Donald Trump, Asian and Black progressive organizers are standing in solidarity to denounce violence and division at events including a Saturday rally in New York City.
Hundreds of masked people attended an emergency rally hosted by Asian, Black, and Latinx organizers in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park on Saturday to demand justice for Vicha Ratanapakdee—an 84-year-old San Francisco man who died in a brutal January 28 assault—and to call for interracial unity.
“The current justice system is pitting Black and Asian communities against one another, just like how news sources did during the L.A. Riots,” said rally co-organizer Rohan Zhou-Lee, who is of Black and Asian descent. “We can fight anti-Asian and anti-Black hate at the same time.”
Read more at Common Dreams.