APIs Rise on the Murder of George Floyd

Life is not what you alone make it. Life is the input of everyone who touched your life and every experience that entered it. We are all part of one another.  Yuri Kochiyama

APIs RISE is devastated by the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by Minneapolis police. We mourn with his family and loved ones and the Black community in Minneapolis, Sacramento, and beyond.   What happened to Mr. Floyd brings back painful memories of Sacramento’s own police killing of Stephon Clark.  

We also stand firmly against anti-Asian sentiment and racism against Asians in Minneapolis and wherever it occurs.

We have a moral imperative to join in the demands for justice.  The Asian American civil rights movement would not be what it is but for the Black liberation and civil rights movements that preceded and grew alongside it.  The Asian Pacific Islander American community organizing and empowerment work that APIs RISE funds and supports would not be but for the civil and voting rights struggles that Black people led and for which many sacrificed their lives. 

Just as we must fight and seek government accountability for the racist actions and hate crimes against APIAs around the COVID-19 pandemic, so too must we demand that the other officers who abetted or stood by as their fellow officer suffocated George Floyd to death, be charged and brought to justice. 

We see this as the latest in a seemingly endless cycle of Black lives lost to racist police brutality or vigilantism. We have also seen that the public outrage and protests that follow, though entirely justified and necessary, have not resulted in true justice or prevented the next senseless killing of a Black man or woman. 
 
We are in a time that is eerily reminiscent of the 1992 uprising following the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers even though their brutal beating  of Rodney King, another unarmed Black man, was also captured on video.  The ensuing days of unrest in cities across the nation was a result of excessive force by police as well as heightened social, economic, and racial inequality.

What was true then is still true today, and even more so. COVID-19 is exposing the deep and long-standing inequity embedded in our society.  There are disproportionate infection and death rates among Black and Brown people, rising anti-Asian hate and violence, dangerous working conditions for immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, who are also essential workers. The poor, who are disproportionately people of color, are clearly the most harmed by the sudden precipitous economic downturn.

We commit to supporting Black leaders and activists in what is inevitably our shared struggle for true accountability and necessary structural transformation.  For now, below are our suggestions for actions to join.  

With love and in solidarity with our Black brothers and sisters and all those who mourn the loss of George Floyd’s most precious life,

The APIs RISE Fund Working Group