Call your Senator Toll Free To Urge Support of urge support for the Hate Crimes Prevention Act

CALL YOUR SENATORS!

Wednesday, July 15

Call your Senator toll free at 866-659-9641 between 9:00 am and 5:00 pm EST and urge support for the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Hate Crimes Prevention Act (S. 909).

Current law limits federal involvement in hate crimes cases to those involving crimes motivated by race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin. This Act will expand this law to include crimes that are motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. It will give federal government jurisdiction to prosecute hate crimes in states where current law is inadequate and also provide greater access and grants to assist federal authorities to investigate hate crimes.  

For APAs, the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982 still resonates throughout the community.  Vincent, a Chinese American man, was beaten to death by two autoworkers who blamed Asians for the economic woes of U.S. autoworkers. Twenty-seven years later, Thanh Hong, a Vietnamese American student was assaulted and had racial epithets yelled at him when walking past a fraternity house. Thanh suffered a facial laceration requiring several stitches.  Although Vincent’s murder galvanized the APA community to launch its first nationwide pan-ethnic movement to stop anti-Asian violence and hate crimes, Thanh’s case reminds us how much more needs to be done to stop these crimes from occurring. 

The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act is a comprehensive and measured response to a problem that continues to plague our nation - violence motivated by prejudice.  These crimes are especially destructive because their perpetrators seek not only to harm the immediate victim, but to make a statement to an entire community.