Five years ago, a gunman went on a shooting rampage at three Atlanta-area spas, killing eight people, six of whom were Asian women. The brazen attacks on 16 March 2021 sent shock waves through Asian communities already under siege from a surge in violence during the pandemic.
The shooting – following a spate of attacks targeting Asian seniors – sparked protests, mutual aid organizing and sweeping policy changes. For a moment, Stop Asian Hate looked poised to become the social justice movement of the 2020s.
But within two years, the momentum sputtered as the media and the country moved on. Meanwhile, conflicting stances on the role of police in public safety left the community at odds over how to effectively curb hate crimes against Asians. Today, activists say the movement is at a crossroads under Donald Trump’s second, more aggressively anti–immigrant administration.
“One of the things the initial Stop Asian Hate movement did was frame the issue around hate and interpersonal violence,” said Phi Nguyen, the executive director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta from 2021 to 2023. “One of the policy responses we saw was more hate crime legislation, but I don’t think those policies get to the root causes of violence.”
A campaign that ‘galvanized political power’
Hostility toward Asian Americans crested in the early months of 2020, as the country went into a pandemic lockdown and Trump, in his first stint as president, labeled Covid-19 the “Chinese virus”. Asian people across the country reported being shunned, spat on, bullied and beaten in public spaces. Racial slurs were deployed with abandon.
In response to the rampant racism and growing anxiety, a coalition in California’s Bay Area – AAPI Equity Alliance, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and San Francisco State University – formed the Stop Asian Hate campaign to document the forms of discrimination and harassment Asians were experiencing. What began as the reporting center quickly morphed into a rallying cry: between 2020 and 2024, Stop AAPI Hate recorded nearly 13,000 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents, along with more than 2.4 million unique visitors to its website.
The campaign “galvanized political power” to push through legislation that bolstered mutual aid, public safety and education efforts across the US, said Manjusha Kulkarni, the executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance and a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate.
In Chinatowns across the country, hundreds of volunteers banded together to form patrol groups and escort vulnerable seniors home. Martial arts instructors taught self-defense classes to women. In July of 2021, California legislators invested a historic $156m in victim support, mental health and educational resources to combat anti-Asian hate. Illinois and New Jersey lawmakers passed laws requiring Asian American history to be taught in public schools. These policy wins will outlast the movement itself, Kulkarni said.
“I can say without hesitation that we didn’t forecast in any way that a movement would spring up,” she said. “When we see overall what’s been achieved, it’s been quite tremendous.”