Anti-Asian Racism

Bay Area AAPI Community Calling on Fellow Members To Report Their Experiences

The hope is through more outreach and representation, they see changes

With the violence against the Asian Pacific Islander Community seemingly on the rise, an array of groups are calling for a stop to the attacks.

Now, many of them are also calling on those who are targeted to report their experiences.

For Berkeley-based Hip Hop artist Lyricsi Born and his DJ, he said his new song titled “Anti” took only 10 days to write, produce and shoot.

The newly released song been something the well-known Asian American rapper has been thinking about since the start of the pandemic and rhetoric that was coming from the Trump administration at the time.

"Almost Immediately, we saw a rise in very blatant anti Asian sentiment and violence,” he said.

The tragedy of the murders in Atlanta and a surge in violent attacks on Asian and Pacific Islanders caught on video in the last several weeks.

It ultimately created an urgency for Lyrics Born to produce this track, which is helping raise money to fight anti Asian racism.

Lyric Born’s collaborator, DJ Cutso said it's essentially a rallying call for his community.

"I think this song, what it really means to me is just being able to give our people a voice. You know, we've always been known as a model minority,” he said.

In Santa Clara County, the surge in violence is not just anecdotal.

"In 2020, there were 14 hate crimes that we prosecuted. That's the highest number of hate crimes we have prosecuted in the last 10 years,” said Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen.

“And this year in 2021, even though we're only three months into it, we already have ten."

Paul Jhin, president of the National Asian Pacific Islander Prosecutors' Association told NBC Bay Area that his group is trying to connect with members of the AAPI community and to get them more comfortable with the stepping forward when something happens.

"It's very crucial that victims of crime of any ethnicity, report their crime. And unfortunately, in the API community,” he said.

“The crimes against API's are, we feel, vastly under-reported."

According to prosecutors, there are a number of reasons why crime victims don't report.

This includes language barriers, cultural issues and even an unfamiliarity or fear of the justice system.

The hope is through more outreach and representation that changes.

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