AAPI Heritage Month is for Solidarity
This AAPI heritage month is not one of celebration; it is one that pushes us to meet the demands of freedom; it is one that will be the step towards a freer, more just world. While corporations and institutions celebrate multiculturalism through symbolic and performative events intended to highlight the plight or successes of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, freedom fighters, organizers, and movement workers are at the frontline demanding an end to one of the worse state sanctioned atrocities–genocide.
Globally, Asian Americans are at a precipice: idly stand by as a genocide happens or stand up and fight back. From college campuses to international marches to Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movements, the call for a ceasefire and the call for a free Palestine has echoed throughout the world. As the world meets the demand to end a state sanctioned genocide, Asian Americans have these tasks at hand: denounce US imperialism everywhere, resist carceral systems globally, practice solidarity with Palestine AND combat genocide at every turn. These tasks are not mutually exclusive; they are intricately tied to one another. As an Asian American org that demands freedom from state violence, we know that the inertia of violence shuffles its survivors through many systems of violence–prison, ICE detention, and deportation.
I, like many Asian Americans, have questioned and contended what is my place in this movement? What are the connections between the decarceration movement and Palestine? How can Asian America’s relationship with US imperialism inform our deeper understanding for a global solidarity against the genocide of Palestinian people?
In the search to answer these questions, I tap on my deep reflection and draw on my experience as a child of Cambodian refugees and a movement worker against the carceral state.
US imperialism has impeded Asian and Pacific Islander countries for centuries, from the Philippines-American war, to the Korean war, to the military occupation of the Pacific Islands, and what my family is most familiar with, the wars in Southeast Asia. Many Asian Americans are not unfamiliar with the repercussions of war, especially war backed by the United States. From the carpet bombing in Southeast Asia to the bombs dropped in Palestine, we must draw the connections that history has taught us–that we must do everything in our power, everything in our being, to stop the US war machine. The reminisce of war lives in our bodies, the memory of war gets passed down to future generations, the resistance we feel in our bones comes from the long history of battling US imperialism and white supremacy.
My family are genocide survivors. The Khmer Rouge, a US backed genocide, devastated my family. This genocide leveled my families homeland, murdered my family members, and displaced my family from the country they used to call home. While the world watched and protested the wars in Southeast Asia, the US moved with impunity–fund and fuel war to the furthest extent possible. The US dropped bombs, planted landmines, and used chemical warfare to curb communist movements. The US determined that mass death in Southeast Asia was a justification for advancing US militarism and occupation.
These wars in Southeast Asia–the Vietnam war, the Secret War in Laos, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia–killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian people. These wars created one of the largest refugee resettlement migrations to occur in the world. Hundreds of thousands resettled in the US, while others found refuge in other countries. Refugees are the remnant of war–a reminder that US imperialism values domination of human life. If there is a reminder of the atrocities of war and genocide, it is the refugee. If there is a lesson that the refugee can teach us it is that we cannot lean on resiliency in place of justice and liberation–the ability to endure and overcome death, should not be a reason to let war and genocide happen.
For refugees that resettle into the United States, from what I understand from this work, is that violence does not end at the end of war. State violence in particular, is permeating; it touches every aspect of refugee life in the US. From poverty, to prison, to ICE detention, to deportation, The refugee experience is plagued with experiences that lends itself to the physical and social destruction of life.
When Southeast Asian people entered the United States, they resettled into the United State’s carceral cities–high poverty, underfunded schools, inflated police budgets, overly criminalized cities, and cities where a huge portion of the population is subjected to ending up in the prison system. The prison system and its pervasive powers took the lives of Southeast Asian refugees. It is in the carceral state that Southeast Asian people found themselves neither free nor safe from the grasps of the state.
As it pertains to genocide in Palestine, Asian Americans have the moral obligation to rise in solidarity. The moral obligation being that, if we believe that foreign invasion and death are unjust, we must prevent it globally at all cost. Asian Americans need to understand the stakes of allowing a genocide to take place–the aftermath of genocide doesn’t stop at genocide, it marks the departure point in which state violence has no end. It is the US war machine and the carceral state that links our struggles. The same powers that invaded Southeast Asia are allowing death in Palestine. The same carceral state that locks up people in the US is the same power that trains Israeli soldiers to terrorize Palestinans. The consciousness of Asian Americans must include a critique, understanding and even further, a resistance against US funded genocide. Asian Americans must contend with these questions: do we allow US imperialism to take another country’s sovereignty and dignity or do we make an assertive effort to stop it? Do we practice the tradition of our ancestors–do we resist like our ancestors did before us? Can we rise up to the call and join the global movement to end a genocide? To me, the answers are clear: rise up, resist, disrupt, and unapologetically demand freedom from state sponsored violence.
Our liberation and our freedoms–Asian Americans and the people of Palestine–are intimately tied to each other. We cannot speak for liberation and freedom for ourselves without demanding it for all people. Solidarity is a practice that will keep us all safe; it will get us all free; and it will most importantly, be the downfall of the US war machine.
This May and beyond, we urge people to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and donate to mutual aid funds. We strongly encourage people to pick 1-2 campaigns and share with your communities. Mutual aid depends on the strength of our existing relationships.
See resources below:
By Nate Tan, Co-Director at Asian Prisoner Support Committee