Year Later, Rally Recalls Anti-Asian Violence

The names were read aloud to a hushed crowd.

“Feng Daoyou. Hyun Jung Grant. Kim Sun Cha. Paul Andre Michels. Park Soon Chung. Tan Xiaojie. Delaine Ashley Yaun. Yue Ae Yong. And Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, who survived the incident.”

Then, a moment of silence.

One year after an Atlanta gunman murdered those eight people, most of whom were Asian women, 100 New Haveners gathered to remember the lives lost in the tragic hate crime.

A local pan-Asian collective called Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders New Haven (aapiNHV) partnered with the Yale Asian American Cultural Center (AACC) to organize the vigil, which took place Wednesday evening on the New Haven Green.

The vigil aimed to keep the memory of the victims alive long after the incident’s brief moment in the news spotlight, and to put it in a broader context of a struggle against racial violence.

Speakers shared personal experiences with anti-Asian violence, extended wisdom on the global power structures that create such hate, and offered words of hope on the power in solidarity.

After the scheduled speakers, community members took to the open mic while organizers passed around white vigil candles.

aapiNHV was founded this time last year in response to the both the Atlanta shootings and the overall rise in anti-Asian violence that emerged following racist rhetoric around the pandemic.

Caroline Tanbee Smith, Annie Lin, Jennifer Heikkila Diaz, Christine Kim, Anh Ton, Janet Zheng, Rae Jereza, and others were a part of an organizing group who started the coalition, which is an ​“intergenerational, pan-Asian collective in New Haven” with the mission to ​“build power within our community through organizing, arts and critical education, storytelling and gathering, and by providing direct support.” The group emphasizes solidarity in a ​“shared struggle for liberation, healing, and justice.”

Smith emceed Wednesday evening’s event alongside Assistant Dean of Yale College Dr. Joliana Yee, who is also the director of the Yale AACC, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2021. ​“The ACC is committed to engaging the Asian and Asian American student body, Yale University, and the greater New Haven community in the learning and celebrations of cultures, traditions, and issues related to the varied experiences of the Asian diaspora,” Yee said.

Speakers emphasized that the violence that took eight lives last year neither begins nor ends with the Asian American experience, that it is a result of ​“the rise of white supremacy that is contributing to the rise in anti-Asian rhetoric and violence,” as described in a statement from the Asian American Student Alliance at Yale read by Natalie Semmel.

“This violence is not just about Asians; it is not limited to the Asian American experience. We must recognize the multiple marginalizations and intersectional identities that contribute to violence globally and on American soil. We must remember that Asianness and anti-Asian hate is not the only factor that contributed to the shooting in Atlanta,” said Kelly Chow, a high school senior.

The event organizers invited Black Lives Matter New Haven co-founder Ala Ochumare to speak in solidarity, as well as Sex Workers & Allies Network (SWAN) (which did not attend).

“None of our cultures, none of us here, our foundations are not in patriarchy, our foundations are not in colonialism, and violence. Those are things that have been thrusted and enacted upon us,” Ochumare said.

“For as long as the ideas that help justify colonization exist, none of us are truly ever safe. There will never be a stop to this violence until we can address all of the police violence, the imperialism on our homelands, the fetishization and the colonization perpetuated on multiple fronts by the US empire both here and abroad,” said Jiji Wong, who has lived in New Haven their whole life.

“I hope we can learn this from event that we need each other. Not just us Asians, but all of us: Black people, indigenous people, queer folks, sex workers, elders, the disabled, those still suffering from military intervention in the motherland. We need all of us in solidarity against white supremacy, the cis-hetero-patriarchy, colonization, and imperialism. Only then can we prevent another Atlanta.”