CAARPR Condemns Horrific Massacre Against Asian American and Pacific Islander Women Near Atlanta
March 23, 2021
The Chicago Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression calls for utmost solidarity in the wake of the eight-person massacre in North Georgia last week. We mourn the deaths and honor the lives of Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Kim Grant, Suncha Kim, Paul Andre Michels, Soon Chung Park, Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Yong A. Yue.
We do not hesitate to name and condemn the misogynist, racist hate crime in as fierce terms as we do any other crimes against our brothers and sisters, neighbors, and communities. To the shooter, his victims were objects which were more disposable and easier to extinguish than his own prejudices. He targeted Asian women massage parlor workers because they were deemed as not living up to "normal" patriarchal standards of sex objects. Not only were the women fetishized against their will, but their racial difference was identified as the source of his and others' "sexual addiction" problem.
This latest killing comes amid mounting violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and women on levels we haven’t seen in over half a century. While this massacre and select individual attacks on Asians and women have been covered by the news, there are far more unreported acts of racial and sexual terrorism in Chicago and all across the nation. Of the 3,800 reported attacks on Asians, nationwide in the past year, most were women.
The dehumanization and commodification of Asian women to the point of murder is entirely the product of white supremacy and patriarchy. Women, particularly women of color, make up a majority of service work, as a result of gendered and racialized division of labor. The massacre is a result of the rising culture of misogyny and racism, systems that operate within a patriarchal and white supremacist social order to police and enforce women and people of color's subordination and to uphold patriarchal and white dominance.
Through military interventions in Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia, and elsewhere, the degradation of Asian people and sexual subjugation of women in particular have been reinvigorated again and again. As global US dominance slides to shakier ground, the handful of mega media conglomerates which own virtually all of our news sources, spoon-feed these poisonous narratives once again.
While the Biden administration presents a more subdued contrast to Trump’s overtly sinophobic rhetoric, we still hear the same propagandizing against our neighbors in the east. Our specially-curated super-personalized feeds from Google, Facebook, Twitter and company show us more and more anti-Chinese disinformation every day. As any alternatives to the exploitation-maximizing economy of the United States make ground in other parts of the world, our oppressors right here do everything in their power to turn us against each other. They murmur in one breath platitudes about authoritarianism and conspiracies about SARS-CoV-2, and in the next they feign concern at the rise of white supremacy in America. Whether the media drums up fears about “welfare queens” or freeloading “looters”, jobs stolen by “illegal aliens”, “terrorists” who want to destroy us, or an impending “yellow peril”, the outcome is the same. The seeds of hate grow in a bed of lies. Only in the most powerful country in the world can the poor conditions at home be blamed on entire nations of people abroad. Again we see the results: more racist murders. Imperialist fabrications spun together with white supremacy to ascribe all the failures of our country to anyone of an oppressed nationality having the nerve to exist on this soil—or even to exist at all—will always lead to more violence against Asian, Arab, Black, Latino, and Indigenous people. US state interests plus white supremacy always fosters crimes of hate. These are the very same institutions that are calling for increased policing in light of the rising attacks.
We condemn the calls and actions taken for increased policing in Chicago as well as in cities nationwide. Policing has not and will not prevent sexual, gendered, or racialized crimes. Sexual and gendered violence cases are often taken less seriously and mishandled by police. For this reason, a majority of sexual and gendered violence cases go unreported and systematically undercounted by at least one million cases by police. Even when cases are reported, police fail to prevent or investigate these crimes. In Chicago, for example, it was recently revealed how the police mishandled the case of a 10-year-old girl targeted in a string of sexual assaults.
Police presence actually increases the risk of violence against women, especially women of color. Sexual misconduct is the second most prevalent form of police crimes. The Chicago Police Department's Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA) receives the majority of civilian complaints against police crimes. The BIA totally lacks data transparency, making it impossible to track complaints especially in cases of sexual abuse and domestic violence. Most complaints sent to BIA are "administratively closed." In 2018, Trina Townsend bravely spoke out against CPD sexual assault at the Police Board meeting, during which Lori Lightfoot was the president. Ms. Townsend broke the silence around police sexual violence and sparked the #CopsToo #TheyKnow campaigns in Chicago.
The police stand for the same things that justify and fuel America’s rampant misogyny and racism. The call for increased policing is a co-optation of fear to sow division between Asian, Pacific Islander, women, and Black communities. Solidarity poses a serious threat to the source of the violence -- patriarchy and white supremacy -- systems that the police believe in and enforce. This is why we need community control of the police and to build solidarity across class, gender, and racial lines.
Solidarity is the only force which protects us from this violence, and all oppressed people must fight back against the misogyny, white supremacy, racism and imperialism in all forms. We must recognize the inseparable ties of sexual violence to racial violence, and work to end the subjugation of women of color. Our communities must be empowered to hold police accountable and misogynist white supremacist murderers of Asian people and of all people of color must be brought to justice to the fullest extent possible. With every blow against us we must come together stronger and more united than before.
