Human Rights Commission

Statement Condemning the Anti-Asian and Gender Based Violence in Georgia

18 March 2021

 To Our Northampton Community: 

 At our March meeting of the Northampton Human Rights Commission, we mourned the terrible anti-Asian and gender based violence that claimed the lives of eight women in Georgia this week. We recognize that this is just the most recent, most horrific example of the terrible rise in hate crimes, bias incidents, and hateful speech directed at our AsianAmerican and Pacific Island family, friends, and neighbors.

Last May, our City Council passed a Resolution Denouncing Anti-Asian, Anti- Asian-American and Xenophobic Discrimination which calls on our community to

• condemn and denounce any and all anti-Asian sentiment in any form in andaround our City,
• stand with our Asian and Asian-American neighbors and business community,and
• condemn all manifestations of Anti-Asian racism, xenophobia,discrimination, and scapegoating.

 The Northampton Human Rights Commission affirms the experiences of our Asian American and Pacific Island neighbors who have been targeted and threatened. We affirm the experiences of Black Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color who have similarly experienced harm through racism in our own community. We recognize that there are barriers that prevent our neighbors with marginalized identities from fully participating in our local institutions, and our beautiful community is less beautiful, less whole, less just thanit could be because of their absence.

To our neighbors in the AAPI community who are grieving, and angry, and worried, and scared today, we say: we see you; we grieve with you; we denounce the hate that hurts you. We commit to speak out against anti-AAPI bias and discrimination.

 To every neighbor who has been harmed by the physical, emotional, and spiritual violence born of hatred and systems of oppression: we see you; we affirm your inherent dignity and humanity; we pledge to continue to work against the fear, lies, and hatred that threaten you;none of us will be free until all of us are.

 In Hope,

Wren Bellavance-Grace, Chair                   Megan Paik, Vice-Chair

 Northampton Human Rights Commission 

Booker Bush, MD

Deidre Cuffee-Gray 

Susan MacDonald 

Davina Miller 

Kathy Wicks