Dear Community,

On the one-year anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings, where six Asian and Asian American women were murdered, we at Mu find ourselves writing yet another statement condemning racist, sexist, and violent acts against our communities.

The day after we closed Man of God, our first in-person production in two years, one of our actors returned to school to face a racist social media video posted by her Edina High School classmates.

People might ask, "What is anti-Asian violence?" It is direct physical attacks. It is racial slurs. It is being blamed for the coronavirus. It is being told to "go back to where you came from," "you don't belong here," or "speak English."

We are heartbroken that racism continues to infiltrate our daily lives in horrific and insidious ways. This past winter, Michelle Go and Christina Yuna Lee died unthinkable, brutal deaths. Just last week, a woman was hit 125 times in the head as she entered a New York apartment building. In February, Amir Locke was killed in a police raid that spun his self-defense as the reason for his death. We grieve for them all.

And, while the anti-Asian video is not the same tragedy, it is by no means harmless. It is troubling that some students have the mentality that nonchalant racism is okay. When hurtful gestures such as mock Asian accents and Nazi salutes are not challenged, those gestures can turn into hate, exclusion, and active violence. After all, our youth are the leaders of tomorrow: within our organizations, communities, workplaces, houses of worship, neighborhoods.

We are living in a world where racist attacks against our Asian American community have increased 339% in the last year, with nearly 70% committed against Asian American women, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. In San Francisco alone, the city's police department victim data reported that anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 569% from the previous year.

While this increase of anti-Asian violence has been pandemic-fueled, acts of violence against the Jewish and LGBTQ+ communities have also increased, with Black communities being the most targeted. It's fundamental that we work across cultures and communities in solidarity.

It is usually our most vulnerable who are the victims of brutality—elders, women, and children. Our Asian American community is not a monolith. We are diverse in terms of our citizenship and immigration histories; the breadth of our cultures, languages, traditions, and beliefs; our differences in socio-economic statuses; and the disparities across communities in education. Some of us have been here for four generations or more, while others are recent immigrants and/or former refugees from countries like Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.

Popular culture has been and continues to be responsible for shaping public thought and discourse on how everyday people have or don't have the proper tools, language, and information on how to engage our communities.

And popular culture has inaccurately depicted Asians and Asian Americans in films, television, books, and music. It has hyper-sexualized Asian women and girls and taken away their voices. It has both emasculated Asian men and shown them as martial arts masters or nerds. It has exoticized, hyper-filtered, and reduced to an "aesthetic" our food, traditions, spiritual beliefs, clothing, art, and languages. Asian American history is not part of the curriculum despite it being fundamentally American history. Instead, we must continuously de-center ourselves. And, frankly, we are exhausted.

When our stories are not told, it is easy for people to other us.

As a performing arts company, we fundamentally believe that it's only by telling the complex stories of our communities and giving voice to our narratives that we can show our full humanity. It's only then that people will see us as the true Americans that we are.

Our actor at Edina High School confided in us that in the blink of an eye, she went from feeling proud and empowered from being in Man of God—a play that centers Asian American feminist power—to feeling disempowered, harmed, and belittled.

As we mark this day, we claim our power, our space, our lives. We tell our stories, exercise our voice, and support our allies who are doing the same.

Asian Women's Listening and Healing Circle

Virtual today, Mar 16, 6-7:30 p.m. CT

Hosted by the Coalition of Asian American Leaders (CAAL), Asian Women United of MN, Reviving the Islamic Sisterhood for Empowerment, the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, and Transforming Generations, the event provides a space for Asian women (cis and trans) and nonbinary folks to be in community as they remember the lives of Asian women who have been killed in the last year.

More Info and RSVP ➙