SPOKANE, Wash. — A candlelight vigil and rally was held Saturday evening following the murders of eight people - many of them Asian women - during a shooting rampage in the Atlanta area.
Reflecting on the pandemic, the Inland Northwest is not unique in racially-motivated crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. Data from Stop Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Hate, a coalition dedicated to addressing anti-Asian discrimination, say hate crimes have spiked since the pandemic began.
"Unfortunately it took a tragedy to bring more light to what has been going on, which is really disheartening," Organizer Vina Tran-Cathcart said.
Tran-Cathcart said it shouldn't take 8 people dying, 6 of them being Asian women, to get the community to fully understand the fear that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders feel during the pandemic.
Just in our community, a business put up racist signs about Chinese people and restaurant owners had rocks thrown through their windows in possible hate crimes, but she said the "every day" racism is much more frequent and can fly under the radar.
"I was at the grocery store and I turned into an aisle with another woman and she was talking on her phone and she said into her phone, 'an Asian woman just walked into this aisle, I'm gonna die of Corona,'" she said. "Instantly it was just this shock, you never really think it's going to happen to you until it happens to you."
She helped form Spokane's United We Stand, an organization dedicated to fighting racism and oppression. Her group hosted the vigil that took place in the Sister Cities (Connections) Garden in Riverfront Park.
The event was to give people a chance to grieve and stand up against hate and violence toward the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. Attendees brought candles, artwork and flowers to remember those who were killed.
"We will not let your deaths be in vain," one speaker said.
This was not a one-off situation, Tran-Cathcart said.
"The tragedy in Atlanta was a tragedy, but we can't just remember and talk about it today or this week and completely forget about it next week or the month after," she added. "We have to put constant effort into bringing these talks up, bringing these conversations up about race, about how we can address racism and hate and better to speak better humans."
The Spokane County Human Rights Task Force urges anyone who has experienced or has seen someone else experience a hate-motivated crime to visit their website to submit a report on the incident.
Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward also ordered flags in the city to be lowered to half-staff until sunset on Monday, March 22 following a directive from President Joe Biden to honor the victims.
“Spokane sends its deepest sympathies and condolences to all those touched by the devastating tragedy in the Atlanta Metropolitan area,” Woodward said in a press release. “We join the country in mourning those who have lost their lives in this senseless attack.”
A gunman was charged Wednesday with killing eight people at three Atlanta-area spas in an attack that sent terror through the Asian American community, which has increasingly been targeted during the coronavirus pandemic.
A day after the shootings, investigators were trying to unravel what might have compelled 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long to commit the worst mass killing in the U.S. in almost two years.
Long told police that Tuesday’s attack was not racially motivated. He claimed to have a “sex addiction,” and authorities said he apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of temptation. But those statements spurred outrage and widespread skepticism given the locations and that six of the eight victims were Asian women.
Hundreds of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders turned to social media to share their anger, sadness, fear and hopelessness. The hashtag #StopAsianHate was a top trending topic on Twitter hours after the shootings that happened Tuesday evening.