CHICAGO — Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx were joined by hundreds in a downtown Chicago rally against Asian-American and Pacific Islander hate Saturday afternoon.
The event is in response to a sustained rise in hate crimes against the Asian-American community, specifically a recent mass shooting in Atlanta that left eight people dead, including six women of Asian descent.
‘Stop AAPI Hate’, a national advocacy group that tracks hate crimes, has reported more than 3,700 incidents between March 19, 2020 and February 28 of this year. 11.1 percent of incidents reported were of a physical nature.
Three Chinese-Americans who were killed in Chicago throughout the past year were also remembered at the event, which included the deaths of two men in Chinatown in a February robbery and the death of a man in Bridgeport in an armed carjacking.
The rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans in Chicago has lead to a wider push for increased public safety in predominantly Asian communities, as well as advocacy for an increase in education of Asian-American history through the ‘Teach Act.’