Opinion: To stop anti-Asian violence, embrace solidarity
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John Choe is a candidate in City Council District 20. Campaign photo
By John Choe
On Feb. 16, a man spewing racist slurs shoved an elderly Asian American woman to the ground at Roosevelt Avenue and Main Street. I am shocked and heartbroken that this happened in Flushing, Queens, my home and the heart of New York’s largest Asian community.
The attacker was quickly arrested and then released; the woman was rushed to the hospital. Still, the message is clear: We are not safe in our own neighborhoods.
Asian Americans have historically been labelled perpetual foreigners. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1942 Japanese American Internment, and the 1992 Burning of Koreatown in Los Angeles are just a few examples of the bigotry and discrimination we have faced. And during the pandemic, politicians scapegoated us for the “China Flu” to cover up their own incompetence. They have directly encouraged the spike in anti-Asian violence by calling us dirty spies and COVID-carriers.
I am glad that the media is starting to pay attention. Better late than never. But we can’t rely on the media sharing the trauma and violence we face to solve all our problems — problems that are often misunderstood or simply not seen.
In November, we found the body of an elderly Asian man curled up in a cardboard box, where he had been sleeping on Prince Street and 40th Road in downtown Flushing. He had neatly placed his shoes outside before passing away from cold and hunger. This too is violence — violence caused by politicians and institutions that continue to deny New Yorkers our right to housing, healthcare and food.
Though Asians are called the Model Minority — well-behaved, quiet, hard-working members of the “good” minority group — that’s a myth that erases our struggles and divides us from other marginalized groups. Despite the idea that Asian Americans are well-off, we make up the city’s fastest growing population in poverty. More than a quarter of the City’s Asian population is poor. Many Asian seniors can’t get government help because of their immigration status or language barriers.
And, of course, COVID-19 devastated our community. By May 2020, the unemployment rate among Asian Americans had surged from about 4 percent to 25.6 percent, the largest increase among all major racial groups. The effect is clear at La Jornada, the food pantry where I volunteer in downtown Flushing. Every week, as many as 10,000 people line up for food.
It shouldn’t have to be this way. I’m running for City Council in District 20, which includes Flushing, so that I can work with my colleagues to take down the institutions that perpetuate oppression. We must fight the elites who exploit economic downturns to cut education, job training and social programs. These austerity policies tend to increase crime, which leads to more spending on police and prisons, and even less on needed social programs.
On average, it costs $208,513 to jail one person at Rikers for a year, far more than it would cost to house and provide social services, education and job training to the same person.
The key to fighting back successfully lies in recognizing that Asians are not alone. Anti-Asian violence is part of a larger system of anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Indigenous genocide designed to divide and exploit us.
Our fate is tied to the fates of our Black, Latino, and Indigenous neighbors, who have been oppressed and controlled through slavery, mass incarceration, and border closings. We have all been targeted by white supremacy, and a coalition of mutual support can ensure a safer city for us all.
It’s beginning to happen. We have cared for each other through mutual aid and shared fridges since the pandemic began. We have marched together for racial justice every day this summer. Now, racial and ethnic groups are uniting against anti-Asian violence.
Activist Rohan Zhou-Lee put it best at a Washington Square Park rally on February 20th: “The current justice system is pitting Black and Asian communities against one another, just like how news sources did during the L.A. Riots … We have to imagine a new world of justice rooted in compassion, not a system built on the slavery of Africans, the genocide of the Indigenous, the exploited labor of Asians, and the lynching of all the above.”
I emphatically agree. Let’s do it.
John Choe is president of the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce and a candidate in Council District 20.
