For Immediate Release: March 17, 2021
Contact: Michelle Loo, michelle@apalanet.org 

​Washington, DC - Last night, eight people were murdered at three spas in Georgia, many of whom were Asian and immigrant women that were targeted at their workplaces. These killings happened amidst a global pandemic that has revealed the vulnerability most workers face in America and brought to the forefront anti-Asian racism, both of which are critical to maintaining white supremacy. These murders show how both racism and sexism shapes the specific ways that Asian women experience violence; Asian women are fetishized as sex objects and perceived as deserving of violence. Such dehumanization goes back to more than a century ago when the Page Act of 1875 defined all Asian women as sexually deviant and therefore limited their mobility and freedom. These murders were also driven by the demonization of China, where institutions from all sides are blaming a whole nation of people, and thus all people racialized in the same way, for everything from the COVID-19 pandemic to the resulting failing economy. 
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Monica Thammarath, President of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO stated, “We grieve for the eight workers who were killed in Atlanta. We take a moment to acknowledge that many of them were the aunties and immigrant women in our communities who face immense barriers to finding work and supporting their families. We also should not overlook the fact that these were Asian and Asian American women working in industries with few worker protections and oversight. It is misogyny and white supremacy that both empower white nationalists to acts of violence, and policymakers to exclude workers from protections when they are in industries disproportionately represented by women and immigrants. We will hold the women and their coworkers and their grieving loved ones in our hearts as we continue to fight for our communities.” 

Building safety starts in our local communities. Check out the #WeKeepUsSafe: APALA’s Resource Guide on Anti-Asian Violence to learn more about how we can work together in the face of violence. We can learn so much from our Black and brown siblings on how we can build community safety without calling for more systems that perpetuate violence towards women, immigrants, Black people, disabled people, and others in our communities. ​
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We echo the calls of our siblings at Advancing Justice Atlanta, “During this time of crisis for our AAPI community, we call on our local and state government to provide robust and responsive crisis intervention resources, including in-language support for mental health, legal, employment, and immigration services. It is time for Georgia to invest in transformative justice that begins with cross racial dialogue and community-building that address the root causes of violence and hate.”

For Immediate Release: March 17, 2021
Contact: Michelle Loo, michelle@apalanet.org 
Labor Movement Fighting Anti-Asian Racism in All Forms

Washington, DC - The continued anti-Asian racism that has skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic is a stain on our nation. The labor movement again condemns this vile behavior and will continue to fight these injustices.

“The entire labor movement is appalled by the continued rise in anti-Asian racism across the country. Acts of physical violence, yelling of racial slurs and intimidation tactics used against our Asian American friends, family and communities must be called out and stopped,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “Anti-Asian rhetoric is only hurting our nation more during this pandemic, and we all must stand up and condemn in the strongest terms possible that racism in any form is unacceptable.”

Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance National President Monica Thammarath stated, “It is not right that Asian Americans are afraid to be alone in public, especially our elders who live in poverty and depend on access to community services, and our young people who live in places where there are few community spaces to turn to. We grieve for the elders who have been assaulted in Chinatowns across the nation. We grieve for Vicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai man who was attacked on one of his daily walks in San Francisco. We send our love to Noel Quintana, a 61-year-old Filipino American who was attacked on a Manhattan subway car, and to the 52-year-old Chinese American woman who was attacked outside of a Flushing bakery. We grieve for Christian Hall, a Chinese American teenager who was murdered by the Pennsylvania State Police. We grieve for Angelo Quinto, a 30-year-old Filipino American who was murdered by Antioch, California, police. Our communities are hurting, and we are more agitated than ever to create change.

“This is part of a long history of violence against Asian Americans that includes the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, lynchings and white mob violence on Asian ethnic communities, denaturalization of Indian American citizens, and Islamophobia against Muslim, Arab and Middle Eastern communities. Last year’s June uprisings for Black Lives Matter showed just how important it is for social justice movements to forefront building community safety. Securing this ability for people to move around or stay where they are safely, requires all of us to ensure that everyone has adequate access to housing, food, health care and other basic necessities to live. By working to ensure we meet each other’s needs, we learn valuable lessons on how we can keep each other safe and take community safety back in our hands.”

“Racism in any form is wrong. Plain and simple. I have been so incensed to see the attacks on our Asian brothers and sisters that I could just scream,” said Clayola Brown, AFL-CIO civil rights director and A. Philip Randolph Institute president. “For those of us of color who have endured systemic racism for 400 years, it is scary to see this unrelenting targeting and denigration happening to another group. The kind of ugliness we’ve seen happening to members of the Asian community as they simply go to the store or gather in a park to visit is disgusting and must be stopped. To watch elderly people come under attack and no one come to their aid shows we still have so much more work to do. Humanity must prevail. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘The time is always right to do what is right.’ We must all take responsibility to make sure that no one is targeted, tormented or harassed because of their ethnicity. Until we learn that lesson, we all pay the price for racism.”

For Immediate Release: March 9, 2021
Contact: Michelle Loo | michelle@apalanet.org

​Washington, DC - APALA is dismayed by the Biden Administration’s decision to reopen a child detention camp in Carrizo Springs, TX. On top of the thousands of deportations that have continued, it is critical to oppose this detention and deportation machine. 
As an organization powered by immigrant workers and allies, our vision of a just immigration system is one that ends detentions and deportations and protects families, refugees, and asylum seekers in ways that are informed by love, empathy and justice. This means creating fast pathways to citizenship for all migrants, expediting reunification processes for people who come here, and diverting funding from detention camps to social services. Permanently closing the children’s detention camp in Carrizo Springs and others like it will be vital to our nation. 
On the other hand, the introduction of the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 in the House and Senate is a step towards the right direction as it includes provisions to:

• create a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants including Dreamers, TPS holders;
• recapture and create new opportunities for family based immigration while eliminating discrimination against LGBTQ+ families (Judy Chu’s Reuniting Families Act);
• eliminate per-country caps for employment based immigration, improving access to green cards for workers in lower-wage industries;
• authorizes dependents of H-1b holders to work in the US; and
• restrict the executive power to enact future discriminatory bans such as the Muslim and African Bans and prohibit religious discrimination in our immigration laws (Judy Chu’s No Ban Act) 

However, The U.S. Citizenship Act could be strengthened if it did not include provisions to carve out large populations of immigrants from its protections. Currently, it denies immigrants with LPI status access to vital health care and it denies immigrants who have been harmed by the racist legal system from any of these protections. 
APALA Chapters and members are prepared to continue taking action against the U.S. deportation and detention machine, and advocating for inclusive immigration policies.