My Asian American friends, writer & academic sisters are crying.

We are filled with rage and grief, long denied to us.

We have been denied our rights to grieve historically.

We have been cast as harlots.

As seductresses.

As dragon ladies.

As foreign invaders.

And/Or…

As submissive.

As hard-working.

As quiet.

As voiceless.

As powerless.

As silent.

As forgotten.

As disposable.

None of these castings were by our choice, or if some of us chose to engage with them, often it was a choice of survival.

Even if we were all these things that people see us as, if they see us at all, it shouldn’t actually matter because what justifies the robbing us of our humanity? Or any part of the fullness of our experiences? What justifies erasure? What justifies silencing?

Solidarity work requires us to amplify the need for attention for one another.

I try my best to amplify the need for structural change to address the needs of others: my Black siblings, my undocumented siblings, my Indigenous siblings, my Latinx siblings, my Muslim siblings, my disabled siblings, my LGBTQ+ siblings. I am imperfect in these efforts, but I am ever striving to amplify, to advocate, to walk alongside, to love, to humanize, to listen.

I am tired today. I am too tired to continue tweeting. I am too tired to author statements for the organizations that I serve. I may even be too tired to respond if you reach out (and I appreciate all of you who have reached out).

What I need most from you, in my exhaustion, personally, is to keep reaching out in love, but understand if I can’t articulate anything I need beyond that.

As a community member, I’d consider showing solidarity in one of the following ways:

• Amplifying calls for action for supporting the Asian American community, specifically those that rely on investing in communities not on increased policing which has not been shown to deter anti-Asian hate crimes or promote community safety.
• Donate to an organization that is focused on Asian American justice, or specifically in Atlanta, consider donating to Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta or Red Canary Song, a grassroots collective of transnational Asian migrant sex workers, who are largely targeted by violence. If you want to wear your support, consider buying an Asian American AF shirt, with proceeds going to AAAJ-ATL for the next 10 days.
• Amplify the very sparse media coverage of Asian democracy movements, including the current humanitarian crisis in Burma.
• Advocate for the teaching of hard histories of people of color, including the histories of Asian Americans in the US, who have both contributed to the building of this country, and been forcibly excluded and scapegoated in policy and practice, in this country, for the last 150+ years. Learn these histories yourself.
• If you are on the board of an organization, use your voice to stand against anti-Asian hate, and then consider where you might be perpetrating subtle forms of reifying Asian American stereotypes of violence against Asian Americans. Consider how your silence may be unstated complicity or buy in to the idea that Asian Americans are no longer suffering in a white supremacist state because this is a more comfortable position to take.

Signing off for now, and sending love.