National Women’s Liberation Stands in Solidarity with the Stop Asian Hate Movement

National Women’s Liberation stands with our brothers and sisters in the AAPI community to speak out against the recent murders in the Atlanta metro area and condemn all racist and sexist attacks against Asian Americans.

On March 16, 2021, a white man took the lives of eight people, six of whom were women of Korean and Chinese descent.

WE SAY THEIR NAMES:

Delania Ashley Yaun

Paul Andrew Michels

Xiaojie Tan

Daoyou Feng

Julie Park

Hyun Jung Grant

Suncha Kim

Yong A. Yue

We recognize that this most recent murder spree is part of a sharp increase in hate crimes and violence targeting AAPI people and reflects a surge in violence against people of color more broadly. This violence, committed by white men in the United States, is the result of the interlocking systems of white supremacy and male supremacy, inflamed and encouraged by Trump and exacerbated by his anti-Asian rhetoric during the pandemic.

The Cherokee Country Sheriff’s Office characterized the murderer as a victim of sex addiction, rather than a killer motivated by virulent racism and sexism. This narrative, amplified by the media, perpetuates stereotypes which hypersexualize and dehumanize Asian women. It perniciously ignores the anti-immigrant fervor that leads immigrant women to work in jobs that leave them vulnerable to violence. It disregards the U.S.’s long history of anti-Asian sentiment and scapegoating, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Japanese Internment Camps during WWII, and the U.S. imperialist wars that ravaged communities across Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Men who commit violence against women are protected by those in power, who benefit from male supremacy, white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism. We reject the characterization of these perpetrators and murderers as “lone wolves” or troubled individuals. We reject solutions that expand the power of the police, who themselves commit racist and sexist violence and ask us to sympathize with white killers while they themselves condemn the grassroots movements that demand an end to state-sanctioned violence.

These hate crimes against members of the AAPI community are rooted in the fundamental hate crime of imperialism, which significantly expanded the sex trade and horrific abuse of AAPI women and girls. The dehumanizing actions the U.S. government supports overseas is directly related to the violence we saw in Atlanta.

We demand an end to white supremacy and male supremacy, which motivate the violence and murder of women of color. We call for these murders to be called what they are, hate crimes based on race, gender, and sex.

As we mourn the sisters and brother we lost on Tuesday, we remind ourselves that this fight is far from over. None of us are truly liberated until all of us are free.