For decades, the Asian Law Caucus has centered the needs of survivors of hateful violence, particularly state violence and oppression, in our work. We stand side-by-side with survivors, defending their rights, repairing harm, and enacting policy change to prevent future trauma and violence. In the early 1970s, the San Francisco Police Department targeted Chinatown youth with discriminatory dragnets. We stepped in and filed one of our first lawsuits, Chann v. Scott, successfully ending the unconstitutional arrests. Amid a recent sharp increase in anti-Asian violence and hate speech, including bullying, harassment, and physical violence, our teams continue to center healing and community safety as we work intensively to address the root causes of anti-Asian violence and the unconscionable lack of safety in underserved, overpoliced communities.

Asian American Leaders Table Unites Communities in Grief and Community-Based Response

As a group of more than 60 organizations spanning the country, the Asian American Leaders Table addresses increased anti-Asian racism and violence on both the individual and systemic levels. This is central to the long-term safety and well-being of our Asian American, immigrant, and refugee communities, who have been contending with the sharp increase of white supremacist attacks–bullying, racial epithets, anti-China rhetoric, harassment, and targeted physical violence–and as a result of intensified xenophobic rhetoric espoused by political leaders.

The table provided practical policy solutions to help survivors, communities, and allies address violence in ways that lead to collective healing. Our recommendations span from establishing rapid response networks to track and respond to incidents and providing bystander training to funding and supporting restorative justice programs.

On March 16, 2021, eight people, including six Asian women massage workers, were killed at three spas in the Metro Atlanta area. Table members quickly convened to support partners in the region, including Advancing Justice - Atlanta, who were addressing the immediate needs of the families of victims and survivors. In the following days, the table organized a national letter calling on the Biden administration to commit immediate and long-term federal funding towards addressing anti-Asian hate violence through community-based solutions, including:

• providing funds for holistic wrap-around victim assistance services, including in-language hate reporting, mental health, comprehensive support, system navigation and advocacy for victims and survivors;
• creating alternatives to law enforcement including violence prevention, crisis intervention and transformative justice programs that are culturally and linguistically accessible;
• supporting programming that encourages cross-racial dialogues and community building; and
• ensuring resources are disaggregated to ensure that they are appropriately directed to Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities and organizations on the ground, among other measures.

The national call to action informed President Biden’s response to the Atlanta spa shootings, including $49.5 million in funding for community-based, culturally specific services and programs for AAPI survivors. In the months that followed, table members came together to grieve and respond to continued violence, misogyny, and racism against Asian Americans and immigrant communities, and to hold elected leaders accountable for ending the root causes of hate and violence and creating policies that center the most vulnerable communities through victims’ compensation funds, violence prevention, and public investments in safe and affordable housing, public health and education.

Addressing Anti-Asian Racism Under the Pretext of National Security

Since the start of the Biden administration, we have worked with partners across the country to end the Justice Department’s “China Initiative” and urge the administration to combat the pervasive racial targeting of Asian American and Asian immigrant scientists, researchers, and students by the federal government.

With the Brennan Center for Justice and APA Justice Task Force, the Advancing Justice affiliation organized a letter with a series of recommendations for the incoming administration, including immediately ending the China Initiative, reviewing existing cases for racial bias, and training intelligence agencies to eliminate bias from their investigations.

In a Kansas case in which the FBI and DOJ targeted scientists based on their Chinese ancestry, we filed an amicus brief in federal court explaining the history of anti-Chinese laws and policies of the U.S. government, and the harm caused by the anti-Asian rhetoric that accompanies these prosecutions. In another case where the government arrested a UC Davis professor based on supposed visa fraud we consulted with her defense counsel to ensure they were aware of the context of the persecution of Chinese scientists and provided resources to assist them. The U.S. attorney later dropped the charges, but not until after it had held her in pretrial custody and destroyed her UC Davis fellowship and reputation in the U.S.

The Biden Administration has since ended the China Initiative, at least in name, but that is just one example of the U.S. government’s long history of discrimination and state-based discriminatory policies that target communities on the basis of their race, ethnicity, national origin, or religious background. In the past few years, we have also continued to represent and advocate for Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, South Asian, Chinese and Black community members who are all experiencing the chilling parallels of mass surveillance, unwarranted investigations, and unjust prosecutions by the federal government.

Historic Statewide Funding for AAPI Communities’ Health and Safety

In partnership with Advancing Justice - Los Angeles and with the support of dozens of organizations statewide, we drafted and advocated for the Hate Violence Victim Support Act in California (AB 886). The bill would fund mental health services, resource restorative justice solutions, and remove barriers to victim compensation funds for those directly impacted by hate violence. In addition, we worked closely with our partners to support their advocacy for the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) Equity Budget, a historic three-year investment of $166.5 million. While AB 886 did not pass the legislature, its policies and investments were adopted under the API Equity Budget. The budget bill included:

• $110 million for community-based organizations who provide survivor and victim services and violence prevention;
• $10 million to support restorative justice programs at K-12 schools; and
• $10 million to improve the disaggregation of data collection and promote data equity and accuracy in understanding and funding AAPI communities, among other investments.

Ending Anti-Asian Hate of ICE Transfers

For years, the Asian Law Caucus has represented Southeast Asian refugees who have criminal convictions, served their time, and are fighting cruel deportation orders to countries they have never known and that would tear them apart from their loved ones. Many of these Southeast Asian refugees fled war and genocide as young children and then faced anti-Asian violence and bullying in this country. As a result, some joined gangs as youth for protection due to feeling unsafe in communities that are under-resourced and over-policed, which created situations where they also made mistakes and were then subjected to being tried as adults and draconian prison sentences. Without community-centered solutions and a reimagining of our criminal legal systems, these cycles of trauma and harm never end.

In 2020 and 2021, through legal representation and community advocacy, we celebrated many movement victories. Yuri Kochiyama Fellow Chanthon Bun came home and started working with us and many other California partners in the movement to end ICE transfers. Formerly incarcerated firefighters Kao Saelee and Bounchan Keola were pardoned by Governor Newsom and able to come home to their families instead of being detained once again and potentially deported. The pardons followed a groundswell of state and national support, including over 200,000 petition signatures and support from elected officials and organizations across the country. Through the leadership of the ICE Out of CA coalition, statewide legislation to stop ICE transfers and end this form of systemic anti-Asian and anti-Black racism made it farther than ever before. That statewide coalition continues to deepen multiracial and intergenerational organizing to end the double punishment and family separation of immigrant Californians.

Bystander Intervention Trainings

Locally in the Bay Area, we have provided bystander intervention trainings to more than 15,000 people, to empower participants with strategies to safely respond to harassment and anti-Asian racism and hate violence. With Right to Be (formerly Hollaback!), we developed curriculum specific to the communities we represent and work in, for example, integrating summaries of the history of discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, the ways we have addressed the impacts of current and past discriminatory policies, and the harm that overreliance on local law enforcement poses to communities of color. With this curriculum, our aim was not only to equip our communities with Right to Be’s strategies of the 5D’s to safely intervene when harassment occurs but also to provide awareness of the history and the struggles of AAPI communities.