Dear Beloved Community,
It is with great sadness and rage that I write this note to you. Last night 8 people were murdered in shootings in three separate attacks across the Atlanta metro region. All but one of the victims were women. We hold the stories, families, loves, and dreams of all of us impacted by this tragedy close to our hearts. The sadness we feel is the result of the senseless loss of life, the knowledge that they did not deserve this, and the reminder that the fight against white supremacy is persistent and exhausting regardless of the gains we make.
Our rage comes from the inability of those in positions of power to acknowledge what happened last night as the result of white supremacist efforts to target Asian communities across the country. Both the hand wringing of the media in covering the rise of these attacks and its inability to make the most visible connections between white supremacy and misogyny is evidence that those with the greatest responsibilities are ill equipped to actually name the perpetrators of our pain in this moment. Our rage comes from the hypocritical statements of support by corporate leaders in a place like Georgia as they simultaneously finance efforts to undermine the ability of all communities to fairly participate in elections. Our rage comes from the lack of support to AAPI leaders who have been ringing the alarm about the rise of violence perpetrated against their community for well over a year now. Last night’s killings are 1 in nearly 3,800 acts of violence perpetrated against Asian people since March 2020. This violence is not accidental and should be wholly connected to the white supremacist agenda of the last administration.
At the Marguerite Casey Foundation, we are committed to harnessing this rage by continuing to support local and statewide organizing efforts to shift the balance of power to those who have long been excluded from it. We are committed to moving beyond statements of condemnation and toward harnessing the full weight of our resources– our grantmaking, our investments, our platform, and power– to name and fight white supremacy in our communities, corporations and political institutions. Today we stand in solidarity with those who work everyday to dismantle the white supremacist systems and efforts that have enabled and encouraged violence against Asian and Asian American communities.
In solidarity,
Carmen Rojas
