RAFA CONDEMNS RISING VIOLENCE TARGETING ASIAN AMERICANS ROOTED IN 150+ YEARS OF USA COLONIALISM AND RACISM
Rank and File Action condemns racist violence against Asian Americans. We are angered and saddened by the racist, misogynist murders of Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Paul Andre Michels, Soon C. Park, Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Yong A. Yue in Atlanta on March 17. We also uphold Yang Song, an Asian New Yorker sex worker, and the NYC massage worker who died in 2017 after being raped and relentlessly coerced into being an informant by the NYPD.
Anti-Asian racism is intertwined with heteropatriarchy, imperialism, and white supremacy, and it is embedded in a long history of US empire and capitalism, from US enrichment from the Opium Wars, to the exploitation of Chinese workers building the transcontinental railroad, to exclusion acts criminalizing Asian immigration, the colonization of the Philippines, to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The US imperialist aggression in the 20th century, responsible for the murder of millions of Asian civilians in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, played a key role in entrenching racist and misogynist characterizations and treatment of Asian women. Current endless war waged by the US military and its contractors in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, and Yemen cannot be separated from the white supremacist violence perpetrated on North American territory occupied by the US.
The recent spate of increased violence against Asian Americans draws strength from the racist association of the COVID-19 virus with Asians and bipartisan demonization of China as a geopolitical rival of the US. We stand in solidarity with our Asian American communities at CUNY, in New York City, and beyond, and are inspired by fierce resistance led by Asian American and Asian Canadian organizers (including Red Canary Song, Butterfly, and AAJA). We follow the leadership of these organizers in calling for a decriminalization of sex work and abolition of ICE, policing, prisons, and war. As higher education workers, we recognize the key role played by Asian and Asian American study programs and demand full funding for these programs at CUNY as advocated by Asian American/ Asian Research Institute-CUNY. We also demand robust individual and collective support systems including culturally and linguistically competent Licensed Mental Health Counselors for Asian students, staff, and faculty on every CUNY campus.
March 25, 2021
Rank and File Action (RAFA) at City University of New York (CUNY)