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Atlanta was a watershed: Lessons for Fighting anti-Asian Racism
First published on August 30, 2021 in Tempest
Pranav Jani examines the rise of activism against anti-Asian racism in the wake of the Atlanta spa shootings, tracing the long history of racism against Asian/AAPI immigrants and Asian Americans in the U.S. — and the lessons this history offers for building solidarity and advancing the broader fight against white supremacy and capitalism today
A new wave of organizing against anti-Asian racism
On Thursday, April 1, I found myself in a very familiar place: demonstrating against racism and white supremacy on the Oval at Ohio State, just in front of the library at the Thompson statue. As a faculty member supporting student-led organizing for many years, I’ve been at that popular spot for campus protests quite a bit.
But as I looked around at the mostly Asian/AAPI crowd, listened to the mostly Asian speakers, and heard the slogans and chants, I realized-with shock-that this rally and a previous one in downtown Columbus had been the first demonstrations specifically against anti-Asian racism that I had attended in my twenty-five-plus years as an activist and organizer.
In the aftermath of the Atlanta spa shootings on March 16, in which six of the eight victims…