photo by Robbie Sweeny
Dearest Friends, Colleagues, Community, and Beyond,
We, at Lenora Lee Dance, believe that hate, racism, discrimination, injustice, silence, and apathy have no place in society. We, as artists, activists, community builders, creatives, and forward thinkers, are part of the tapestry of the over 21 million Asian Americans who live here in the United States.
With a history dating back some 200 years, Asians / Asian Americans have played an integral part of building the United States of America, through agriculture, farming, fishing, manufacturing, working on the front lines of the health field in hospitals and nursing homes, and as business owners, scholars, educators, artists, community leaders, lawyers, entrepreneurs, etc.
We, as many other underrepresented communities, have felt the brunt of injustice and discrimination consistently from the beginning, particularly with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act with other racist policies enacted around the same time, in hopes to prevent the immigration, naturalization, and inclusion of Asians in America.
Our contributions and experiences have been minimized and omitted from the American history books. The model minority has been used to invisibilize the struggles of our communities, while also undermining the fight for justice in other communities of color. At the same time, we are treated as perpetual foreigners and in times of crisis, time and time again, our communities have been conveniently used as scapegoats.
The levels of disregard Asian Americans have continually endured over the decades, has come back again into public attention, because of the racist and xenophobic rhetoric running rampant during this COVID-19 pandemic and fueling the rise in hate crimes of harassment, violence, and murder against our communities.
We stand united in voice, community, solidarity, and action with our sisters, brothers, and siblings, fighting in support of justice, equal rights, and safety for ALL Asian Americans. We will not be silent while our mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, neighbors, and community members across the country are under attack. And we will say the names of those who were killed in Atlanta, all of their names:
Daoyou Feng
Hyun Jung Grant
Suncha Kim
Paul Andre Michels
Soon Chung Park
Xiaojie Tan
Yong Ae Yue
Delaina Ashley Yaun
We, as a nation of all people must move forward embracing our country’s diversity, knowing there is broader power and vision to collaborate across communities to support one another in healing from our traumas and that our fight for justice is not mutually exclusive to justice for other communities, but part of the whole.
Let’s celebrate our partnerships, and work together with the experiences of our many communities and generations.
process
SanSan Kwan & Johnny Nguyen. Photo by Robbie Sweeny
Edward Wilkerson Jr., Francis Wong, William Roper, Tatsu Aoki, Mwata Bowden, Kioto Aoki, Melody Takata. Photo by Ken Carl