“That was a very traumatic event, not only to me but it was also a very traumatic event to my family. My two daughters, my wife — everyone reacts to this in their different ways,” Xi said through tears. “We try to go on with our lives, but it’s there.”

“This basic sense of safety of being out in public, going to a dance hall, going to a shopping mall … has really been taken away from us,” said Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and co-director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, who is among Asian American leaders turning a new focus to gun violence.

Jinxia Niu, who manages the Chinese Digital Engagement Project for Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) says anti-Black narratives are frequently found in conversations about public safety, affirmative action, and reparations. She created Chinese language fact-checking boards and independent websites to challenge anti-Black disinformation.

"There were over 150 Chinese who lived in the village and fished and contributed to the community, both through fishing as well as science," said Shelly Gin, a sixth-generation descendant of the Chinese Fishing Village, President of the Quock Mui Foundation, and CAA's Development Manager.

The scale at which AA and PI people have their rights violated is shocking. These findings should be a wake-up call: The fight for our civil rights is not just a history lesson but a movement we must engage in today. By Candice Cho (AAPI Equity Alliance) and Annie Lee (CAA)

“If we lump everyone together, we are and we have missed those differences, and it has led to this belief, this falsehood, that there is no need to focus on educational equity,” said Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of the civil rights group Chinese for Affirmative Action.

Affirmative action opponents have used racial scapegoating to reframe the national debate, exploiting middle-class fears amid a toxic obsession with meritocracy. By Jeff Chang

Cynthia Choi, co-executive director at Chinese for Affirmative Action, speaks at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights's briefing on March 24, 2023 on the federal government’s response to anti-Asian racism in the United States.

Newtown Action Alliance, along with the progressive groups AAPI Victory Alliance, MomsRising and Chinese for Affirmative Action, formed the AAPI Against Gun Violence coalition to engage the Asian diaspora on the issue of gun violence prevention.

After a Texas legislator introduced a bill that would ban land sales to citizens of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, a committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has voted to condemn it. Representatives from Chinese for Affirmative Action, Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and other activist groups spoke at the board meeting in support of the resolution.

The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate began tracking incidents in March 2020, and through March 2022 it received 11,500 self-reports of harassment and physical attacks.

In early February, Nick Gee flew from San Francisco to his hometown of Houston to join the local protests against a proposed state law aiming to ban citizens of China from purchasing real estate in Texas.