Communities across the United States hosted vigils to remember the victims of the Atlanta shootings and to stand against hate crimes targeting Asian Americans on Wednesday.
Shootings at two massage parlors in Atlanta and one in the suburbs on Tuesday evening left eight people dead, many of them women of Asian descent. Although the investigators have not ruled the shootings a hate crime against Asian Americans, the incident is the latest in a series of attacks that have increased during the pandemic.
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People gathered in New York, Washington, D.C., and California with powerful messages to Stop Asian hate.
In January, President Joe Biden issued an executive order condemning the attacks calling for better data collection about hateful incidents, and mandates federal agencies to fight “racism, xenophobia, and intolerance” directed at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, or AAPI.
Stop AAPI Hate, a San Francisco-based group that tracks anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander attacks reported more than 3,000 anti-Asian attacks nationwide since March, when the COVID-19 pandemic exploded onto U.S. shores.