In Grief and Solidarity with the AAPI Community
The Las Vegas chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America mourns the lives of the eight people, including six Asian women, who were murdered Tuesday night in Georgia.
These attacks fit into a xenophobic pattern of anti-Asian violence the capitalist class not only condones, but welcomes as a scapegoat for their complete inaction during the COVID-19 crisis. We agree with national DSA:
“that the gunman’s victims were chosen due to perceptions about their workplace reflects the ongoing misogyny, objectification, and hypersexualization of Asian women, rooted in a long history of imperialism, a continuous dehumanization of the Asian working class, as well as the ongoing criminalization of sex workers.”
We must confront the historical and continued sexual brutalization and dehumanization of both migrant workers and sex workers. Many of the recent incidents targeting the AAPI community have been directed at women, as well as the poor, elderly, and undocumented.
We stand with the AAPI community in grief and solidarity, particularly given Nevada’s diverse and growing AAPI population. According to recent estimates, there are at least 250,000 Asian Americans and 33,000 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders living in the Las Vegas area. Chinese and Japanese immigrants helped build Las Vegas in the late 1800s and have faced over a century of violent, anti-immigrant sentiment.
We must work with our comrades in the AAPI community to dismantle the structures upholding white supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism, as well as the systems perpetuating racist and gender-based violence.