In spring 2021 I moved to San Francisco, against the tide of tech workers moving out. I wound up in the Sunset District, where Asians — mostly Chinese — make up nearly 50% of the population. As I got to know my new neighborhood, I started noticing a poster in many shop windows depicting a white-haired, bespectacled man with a warm smile. The text read, “JUSTICE FOR VICHA.”
Vicha Ratanapakdee, I soon found out, was an immigrant from Thailand who’d died after being assaulted while on his morning walk in what his family and community saw as a hate crime. There was a dearth of media coverage in the immediate aftermath of the killing. But activists helped to make the invisible, visible. A suspect in the case was charged and is set to stand trial.
Making the invisible, visible is the mission of Stop AAPI Hate, an organization founded at the beginning of the pandemic that set about aggregating hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders nationwide. Among the immediate findings was that the vast majority of incidents weren’t so much acts of physical violence as harassment in the form of hate speech in public spaces. Stop AAPI Hate’s reports have highlighted a problem that permeates everyday life for Asians in this country.
