VABAW Condemns Race Driven Attacks on AAPI Community

March 2021

The Vietnamese-American Bar Association of Washington (VABAW) condemns the distressing increase over the past year in hate-based attacks against Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI). Violence toward our communities is nothing new. In April 2020, VABAW denounced the use of racial language to describe the Coronavirus and racist attacks on Asian Americans. Today, we are renewing our condemnation of the attacks against the AAPI community.

Hate crimes have been perpetuated against AAPI for decades. The COVID-19 pandemic has exponentially increased these crimes, the most recent being cowardly attacks against the elderly across the nation and the brutal murder of six Asian-American women in Atlanta. We are horrified and devastated. We grieve with the families of the victims.

VABAW is committed to our work to increase racial equity within the WSBA and combating systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Systemic racism, decades of harmful, racist depictions of Asian Americans in the media, and unwarranted blaming of Asian Americans for the COVID-19 pandemic by past leaders have led to the dehumanization of AAPI and the increase in violence against our community. If you or someone you know have been a victim of a hate crime, we strongly encourage you to report the crime to your local law enforcement agency and prosecutor’s office.

Resources:

  • The Stop AAPI Hate reporting center tracks and responds to incidents of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning, and child bullying against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Make a report here: https://stopaapihate.org/

  • Hollaback! hosts free online trainings related to bystander intervention and how to respond to Anti-Asian harassment when it happens to you. Sign up at: https://www.ihollaback.org/harassmenttraining/

  • The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) has developed a hate crimes task force and offers pro bono legal resources to ensure that local communities have legal resources to address the most egregious hate-fueled attacks against our community. More information can be found here: https://www.napaba.org/page/HateCrimeResources

  • The Asian Mental Health Collective is dedicated to making mental health services more accessible for the community, and has created the Asian, Pacific Islander, and South Asian American (APISAA) Therapist Directory: https://www.asianmhc.org/apisaa


/s/ Amy Phan Taylor /s/ Maria Williams
2021 VABAW Presidents
vabawpresident@gmail.com

We are VABAW.
The Vietnamese-American Bar Association of Washington.

Follow US:

#iloveVABAW