If people want to do more beyond posting on social media, what are some good ways to help out and spread the word?
They need to be upstanders, people who stop racism whenever they see it happening. When someone says something, stop it. When you see racism online, report it. If we didn’t have all of the data and documentation of racism, the media and government wouldn’t pay attention. The more we know about the issue, we can create specific policies to deal with it. We know it’s happening in the schools, so we’re working with school districts to address racial bullying. We know it’s happening on public transit, so we’re calling not for more patrolling but more citizens to monitor and help deescalate issues. People have to intervene, report, and keep amplifying the message. Get official statements from your workplaces, churches, your schools, because we saw how hate was normalized last year so now we need to normalize love and respect.

What are some resources people can use to better educate themselves on the issues facing the AAPI community?
Our website, stopaapihate.org, has plenty of resources. If you’re experiencing racism, if you don’t know how to talk to your kids about racism, if you need legal resources, it’s all there. There are also a lot of history books, I like Erica Li’s. There are also Jose Antonio Vargas’ books about their experiences as Asian-Americans because they interweave history and the current context.

What is the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act and how will it help?
We’re really grateful for Congresswoman Meng and Senator Hirono’s leadership. What it does is expedite hate crime reporting and investigations. If someone gets arrested and the crime is racially motivated, law enforcement will take it a little more seriously and address it more quickly. What it also does, that we really appreciate, is it provides support for community-funded solutions and addresses demeaning language. Again, we saw how racist language led to racist acts of violence. But this is just the first step. We have a range of incidents, and we know racism occurs in schools, online, in stores, and not everything is a crime you can be arrested for. So, we need other policies to address racism before it gets to the level of a crime. We need to support ethnic studies, for example, so that schoolchildren learn empathy and how not to bully. We need expanded civil rights protections so that people can’t harass us while we’re shopping. We want to push for restorative justice, and we want to heal. We want long-term solutions, not Band-Aid solutions.

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