Holland Community Leaders See Progress with Anti-Asian Hate Crime Bill Passing Senate
HOLLAND - Community leaders and residents gathered at Kollen Park on Saturday for a “Stop Asian Hate” rally, held on the heels of an anti-Asian hate crime bill passing the US Senate with a near unanimous vote.
The rally featured members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community sharing experiences of discrimination and pressing for change. Other community leaders shared their support along with Mayor Nathan Bocks at the rally.
“As your mayor, I want to let you know that I have your back. I will protect and defend you,” he said.
Change seems to be coming at a national level with the anti-Asian hate crime bill.
The bill that now makes its way to the House will create a hotline to report hate crimes, an online tracking system for reports as well as create public outreach to empower members of the AAPI community to report cases. The bill will fund local police training to better address the rise in hate crimes and create a point person within the Department of Justice to expedite these cases.
Asian adviser of the Holland/Zeeland Model Community Initiatives, Kavy Lenon, was pleased by the vote and said there’s a need for continued community collaboration.
“I think that with key initiatives like this, having a voice, having a conversations with our representatives, having various groups come together and collaborate. We all have the same mission but often time we have different paths or speeds on how we get there,” She said. “It’s a small win for us and for us to continue having this conversation and really push our community to have a voice to contact their rep to continue driving this forward is so important to us,” Lenon said.
Gloria Lara, executive director of the Lakeshore Ethnic Diversity Alliance, commended the Senate for the vote and on the model proposed for hate crime reporting. She said she hopes to see a similar model used for other groups suffering from hate crimes.
“One of the things that I think is important is that all of us need to be united and that’s my hope to focus on the unity and be able to expand that support to all groups,” Lara said.
Jim Brooks, chairman of the Holland-Zeeland Model Community Initiatives, was speaking with community leaders on finding and addressing the root causes of hate crimes.
“The root issue is our economy and our society is changing significantly and everyone needs different knowledge and skills and if we don’t as a society invest in education to empower people with that knowledge and skills, I don’t know if we will ever get on top of this.”
See a gallery of Saturday’s rally below.
On the heels of the anti-Asian hate crimes bill passing the US Senate with a near unanimously vote, Holland organizers and residents held a rally against racism directed to the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. Organizers said the event was to provide a space for healing and reflection over the recent rise of discrimination and hate crimes faced by Asian Americans over the course of the pandemic.