News + Events
These are the names of the eight victims of the Atlanta spa shooting. Rest in power:
Park Soon Chung 박순정, age 74
Kim Hyun Jung Grant 김현정, age 51
Kim Sun Cha 김순자, age 69
Yoo Yong Ae 유용애, age 63
Tan Xiaojie 谭小洁, age 49
Feng Daoyou 冯道友, age 44
Delaina Ashley Yaun, age 33
Paul Andre Michels, age 54
Social Justice Fund NW shares our grief, rage, and solidarity with the loved ones of the eight people murdered in Atlanta on Tuesday evening, at least six of whom are Asian women.
We cannot mince words: this was a hate crime.
This was an act of anti-Asian, misogynistic violence and white supremacy. Its lineage is the blood-soaked decades of U.S. imperialism and colonialism in Asia that have destabilized, traumatized, and displaced generations of Asians. The same system often forces Asian workers, particularly women, into deeply vulnerable positions.
We do not support policing as a solution to anti-Asian violence. The result of police “intervention” with Asian massage workers in our region and beyond has been more violence, criminalization, and deportations. We mourn Yang Song, a Chinese massage worker whose tragic death in 2017 was the direct result of “intervention” by the NYPD. We are proud to be in community with our Asian-led grantees and other Asian collectives who continually demonstrate abolitionist community care and interdependence as the road to safety and liberation.
We call on our community to resist narratives that generalize and objectify the women murdered yesterday in Atlanta. Not all massage workers are sex workers. Not all sex workers and massage workers have been trafficked. Sex workers and other workers at the intersections of gender and intimacy deserve safety, protection, and power.
We also cannot ignore the backdrop to this event: rising anti-Asian, and particularly anti-Chinese, sentiment, a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic that is rooted in white supremacy. We mourn the harm caused to Asian sex workers, massage workers, healthcare workers, garment workers, restaurant workers, and low-income families and elders, and regret that their struggles are erased by the model minority myth.
Finally, we join many others in our community in naming that the struggles against anti-Black and anti-Asian racism are not in opposition; the racism these communities face is fruit of the same toxic, white supremacist tree. We decry efforts to use Asians as pawns against Black liberation, and wholeheartedly believe in the work of mutual liberation.
To justice, healing, and liberation, with love.
Social Justice Fund NW
Massage Parlor Outreach Project, Seattle | An Asian queer, trans, women, and femme-led grassroots collective supporting Seattle’s massage workers: Venmo @mpop_sea
API Chaya, Seattle | An Asian and Pacific Islander led grassroots organization supporting survivors and families impacted by domestic violence and sexual assault
Red Canary Song, NYC | A grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers, based in NYC and organizing transnationally
SWAN Vancouver | An nonprofit organization serving Chinese immigrant and migrant women engaged in indoor sex work
Butterfly, Canada | A nonprofit organization supporting the rights of Asian and migrant sex workers