Merced rally opposing racism, hate crimes against Asian Americans set for April 3

Merced organizations and leaders are collaborating to hold a unity rally next week to stand against racism in response to the rising tide of hate crimes against Asian Americans nationwide.

The rally, being done in partnership with the Hmong Culture Camp, Merced County NAACP, Lao Association of Merced and Valley Onward is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday, April 3, and will take place at the Merced Civic Center. Face masks and social distancing are required.

The event will include a march to the Merced County courthouse. “We need to work with the community, and want everyone here to love each other,” said Paul Thao, executive director of Merced Lao Family Community, one of the organizers of the event.

Thao said he’s already spoken with Merced Mayor Matt Serratto and other community leaders about the need to prevent hate crimes and ways to be supportive of local Asian communities.

He believes all residents should work together in the spirit of unity “to make sure that every citizen here in Merced is safe.”

Bouasvanh Lor, executive director of the Hmong Culture Camp in Merced, said events like the scheduled rally are important to stand against those who would perpetuate incidents of hate.

“I think what we want to do is we want to have these uncomfortable conversations so that we can heal and move past (hate) and learn to live cohesively in a very diverse community,” Lor said.

“I think it’s more of a healing together as a community from racial inequities and disparities within our communities,” she added. “The change should start here in Merced.”

The rally is in response to the rising tide of hate crimes against Asian Americans and others, which many believe has been fueled in part by hateful rhetoric in politics and on social media.

Many were also shocked by the killing of eight people — six of them Asian American women — at massage parlors in Atlanta on March 16.

Asian Americans say that was hardly the first attack in the past year. Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition of groups that address anti-Asian discrimination, reported that 3,800 hate incidents occurred from March 19, 2020 to Feb. 28 of this year.

The incidents run across the country:

• An Asian restaurant in San Antonio had threatening messages written on its windows after the owner criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s lifting of the mask mandate.

• After being attacked on a San Francisco street, a 69-year-old Asian woman beat the attacker with a wooden stick.

• In the aftermath of eight people — including six Asians — being killed at spas in Atlanta, President Joe Biden said, “Whatever the motivation here, I know Asian-Americans are very concerned. Because as you know I have been speaking about the brutality against Asian-Americans for the last couple months, and I think it’s very, very troubling.”

According to a fact sheet done by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino, in San Francisco hate crime skyrocketed by 50 percent and in San Jose by 150 percent, with an overall staggering 145% rise in hate crimes across the nation’s largest cities.

Lor pointed out that many hate crimes against Asian Americans and others go unreported.

According to the U.S. Census, 7.8 percent of Merced County residents are Asian.

Lor said another goal of the rally is to work together with diverse communities in Merced County who are also targets of racism.

“I think with the younger communities coming into play and being in the forefront, they’re starting to want to voice their opinion, to fight back. I think this is what it’s about,” Lor said.

“We want to address it because we’re often looked at as a model minority who doesn’t complain when (we) are being attacked, we don’t complain when we are being discriminated against because we’re taught to overlook those things so that we can strive for the betterment of our communities,” she said.

“It’s about the Asian communities learning to have a voice for themselves and following the footsteps of the Black Lives Matter movement to have visibility because we’re often swept under the rug as people who don’t really speak up for themselves.”

For more information visit the event’s Facebook page.

This story was originally published March 27, 2021 at 5:00 AM.