Asian American lawmakers in the Virginia legislature are coalescing to form the new Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus, meant to create a unified force focused on issues impacting that community amid a reported rise in harassment and violence against it nationwide.
The caucus launched with a virtual event Friday that saw one lawmaker emotionally describe the need for the legislature’s Asian American members to unify around “our common goals of a more just and equitable future for Virginians.”
“I actually didn’t realize how much I needed this. And how powerful it is that we are coming together,” said Del. Kathy Tran, D-Fairfax, who emigrated from Vietnam with her family as a toddler. “Our movement to lift up the voices of Virginia’s AAPI community is part of a larger movement for racial and economic justice.”
The caucus came together Friday on the National Day of Action and Healing to Stop Asian Hate, a planned virtual event marking the recent violence against Asian Americans, including the shooting deaths of six Asian women at Atlanta-area spas.
Gov. Ralph Northam declared Friday #Stop AsianHate Virtual Day of Action and Healing in Virginia.
“The harassment, violence, and attacks against our Asian American and Pacific Islander friends, neighbors, and community members must stop,” Northam said in a statement.
Data on hate crimes against Asian and Pacific Islanders is scant, but the group Stop Asian Hate reported on March 12 that it received 49 reports of racially driven incidents in Virginia over the past year among a total 3,292 incidents nationwide. The incidents included verbal harassment, physical assault, civil rights violations and online harassment.
Advocates say these types of incidents and crimes are typically under-reported.
“The AAPI community has a long history of being the model minority, known for enduring inequity, racism and xenophobia. The formation of the AAPI caucus symbolizes a shift,” said Del. Kelly Convirs-Fowler, D-Virginia Beach.
“We will advocate for AAPI Virginians, and issues that affect us. We will speak out about injustice towards our AAPI community — complacency and silence lead to hate.”
The founding members of the caucus are Tran; Convirs-Fowler; Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield; and Dels. Mark Keam, D-Fairfax, and Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun.
The caucus includes only Democrats, which is reflective of the lack of racial and ethnic diversity among Republican lawmakers in the Virginia legislature. Keam said lawmakers who are not of Asian descent but represent large Asian American populations will be welcomed to join as ally members, mirroring the structure of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
Keam said Virginia’s caucus doesn’t yet have officers or a formal structure, work that will take place over the coming weeks.
Subramanyam said the caucus would begin its work with a listening tour across Virginia in April. He said the feedback will inform a policy agenda that will be published in May, to coincide with Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
“These sessions will help us gauge the issues of concern in these communities,” said Subramanyam, whose parents emigrated from India in the 1970s, arriving at Washington Dulles International Airport. Last year, he became the first Indian American elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.
During the virtual event marking the creation of the caucus, Tran spoke of the pain she and other Asian Americans have experienced as a result of the recent violent attacks against Asian people in the U.S.
“It’s as if we have been so ‘othered’ that we’re at the point that we’ve been dehumanized,” she said.
She added that the experience of discrimination and verbal aggression is pervasive among Asian Americans. She related that recently, her son overheard other students at school ask whether Chinese people should be to blame for the pandemic — China is where COVID-19 began spreading among humans — echoing comments by President Donald Trump, who called COVID-19 the “Chinese virus.”
“We take all of these microaggressions and pack them up,” Tran said. “That’s hard. It’s just a lot of trauma.”
Keam said the caucus is still developing its policy agenda, but added that he is particularly interested in language access barriers to government services for Asian Americans who don’t speak English.
Keam said the Virginia Employment Commission, which handles unemployment insurance claims, and the Virginia Department of Health don’t offer information in key languages spoken by many Asian Americans in Virginia, many of whom don’t speak English.
As the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported last week, advocates for the state’s Asian American community have been requesting for more than a year that the state’s unemployment benefits form be translated into various languages, including Arabic and Korean.
Full Press Conference- Virginia General Assembly Establishes the Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus
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