Law enforcement officials including the director of the FBI have said the shootings in Atlanta in which eight people were killed do not appear to have been racially motivated, but the Georgia senator Raphael Warnock said on Sunday: “We all know hate when we see it.”
Related: Atlanta spa shootings: Georgia hate crimes law could see first big test
Continue reading...A hate crimes law passed in Georgia amid outrage over the killing of Ahmaud Arbery could get its first major test as part of the murder case against a white man charged with shooting and killing six women of Asian descent at Atlanta-area massage businesses this week.
Related: 'It's time for people to hear us': Georgia's Asian Americans vow to stand up against hate
Continue reading...Joe Biden and Kamala Harris offered solace to Asian Americans and a reeling nation on Friday as they visited Atlanta just days after a white gunman killed eight people, most of them Asian American women. The visit, during a nationwide spike of anti-Asian violence, has added resonance with the presence of Harris, the first person of South Asian descent to hold national office
Continue reading...President and vice-president address nation reckoning with ‘heinous act’ that killed eight, including six women of Asian descent
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have condemned a “heinous act of violence” during a trip to Atlanta, hoping to console a city and Asian American communities rocked by the attack this week that left eight people dead and one injured.
Delivering remarks on Friday evening at Emory University after a day spent meeting with Asian American community leaders and politicians, the president and vice-president spoke out forcefully against the shooting, in which six of the victims were women of Asian descent, as well as the rise in anti-Asian violence.
Continue reading...The Asian American lawmaker Grace Meng called out the violence and discrimination against her community at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday. 'Our community is bleeding. We are in pain. And for the last year, we’ve been screaming out for help,' she said. She told a panel the rising tide of anti-Asian bigotry was fuelled in part by rhetoric from Donald Trump and his allies, who have referred to Covid-19 as the 'China virus' and 'kung flu'
Advocates for sex workers say the spa attacks combined sexism and toxic Asian stereotypes
On Tuesday night, a 21-year-old man named Robert Aaron Long allegedly went on a deadly rampage at three Atlanta spas, killing eight people, including six Asian women. Long’s shooting spree, police say, began at Youngs Asian Massage Parlor on the city’s outskirts, where he killed four people, two of whom were Asian, and injured one; he then allegedly fled the scene and proceeded to Gold Spa, killing three more people, all Asian women; and then he entered a spa right across the street, Aromatherapy Spa, where he killed his final victim.
Following an interview with authorities, the Cherokee county sheriff, Frank Reynolds, maintained that Long “gave no indicators” that his crimes were racially motivated. “We asked him that specifically and the answer was no,” Reynolds said on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Capt Jay Baker also reportedly posted images on Facebook of T-shirts with racist slogan on China and coronavirus
A Georgia sheriff’s captain has faced widespread criticism for appearing to characterise the actions of Robert Aaron Long, the 21-year-old charged with killing eight people in Atlanta, six of them women of Asian descent, as “having a really bad day”.
Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Capt Jay Baker of the Cherokee county sheriff’s office said investigators had interviewed Long that morning.
Continue reading...Kamala Harris said the Atlanta massage parlour shootings were ‘tragic’ and spoke to the larger issue of violence in American society. ‘We must ... never tolerate it and always speak out against it,’ Harris said. Joe Biden said violence against Asian Americans was ‘very, very troubling’, but said was making ‘no connection at this moment of the motivation of the killer’.
At least eight people have been killed in a series of shootings at three Atlanta area massage parlors. Authorities described a number of victims as women of Asian descent. A 21-year-old man, Robert Aaron Long, has been taken into custody. The first shooting occurred at Young’s Asian Massage near Acworth in Cherokee county, just north-west of Atlanta. Police officers responded to a reported robbery at Gold Spa in the city’s north-east and were then alerted to another shooting across the street at the Aromatherapy Spa
Continue reading...Man taken into custody after attacks, as police say many victims believed to be Asian women
At least eight people have been killed in a series of shootings at three Atlanta area massage parlours, with a number of the victims described by authorities as women of Asian descent.
A 21-year-old man, Robert Aaron Long, has been taken into custody following an hours-long manhunt as police told local media that he was the suspect in all three shootings. An alleged motive has not been described.
Continue reading...Former US presidents Barack Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton and House speaker Nancy Pelosi have delivered eulogies for congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. Hailing him as founding father for 'a fuller, fairer, better' America, Obama praised Lewis's influence on his own path to the presidency. Clinton said Lewis believed 'none of us will be free until all of us are equal', while Bush said he lived in a better and nobler country because of the congressman
The largest celebration of the Confederacy should be obscured by vegetation and the park outside Atlanta repurposed away from white supremacy
The current national attention to the interrelated issues of policy reform and representation, along with the murder of two Black men here in Georgia, got me thinking again about the state’s giant monument to white supremacy on the side of Stone Mountain.
It is too big to just tear down, like they are doing with statues in Richmond and elsewhere, but something is going to happen with it eventually. Anti-racist sentiment is growing, and the makeup of Georgia’s population is changing so fast that some kind of modification is inevitable. And while I believe decisions about what ultimately happens there should emerge from meaningful public engagement, I don’t believe we have to wait any longer to make change. Below are some ideas we can start to implement now.
Continue reading...Louie Giglio said his choice of words was poor, but his attempt to rebrand white privilege should also grab our attention
On Monday evening, Atlanta megachurch pastor Louie Giglio apologized for calling slavery a blessing. In an online church service, he was apparently aiming to have an “honest conversation around how racism has plagued our city for generations”.
Then he said: “We understand the curse that was slavery, white people do, and [we] say ‘that was bad’. But we miss the blessing of slavery, that it actually built up the framework for the world that white people live in and lived in.”
Continue reading...The family of Rayshard Brooks, who was shot and killed by a white police officer, have paid tribute to him and told of their devastation. During a press conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Brooks’s cousin said the trust between the Atlanta community and its police department had been broken and called for the officer involved to be charged and convicted.
The press conference comes a day after a medical examiner concluded that Brooks, 27, died by homicide caused by gunshot wounds to the back
Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has been defaced yet again during Sunday afternoon’s Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles, although these days it might qualify as bigger news if the former reality TV host’s terrazzo-and-brass totem went longer than a week unmolested.
Trump’s star was defaced during today’s Hollywood protest march. #blm #hollywoodprotest #JusticeForGeorgeFlyod #hollywoodboulevard #hollywoodblvd #protests pic.twitter.com/UI3SOIZSiV
Hundreds of demonstrators have gathered at the Montana State Capitol building in Helena in protest of the killing of George Floyd and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Helena Independent Record reports Sunday’s protest is the largest of a number of demonstrations that have been held in Montana’s capital city in recent weeks amid the nationwide backlash to police-related violence against black and brown people.
The protest for George Floyd in Helena, MT is... huge. pic.twitter.com/LLwdiHMwxZ
Continue reading...Footage from Garrett Rolfe and Devin Brosnan shows the officers approaching Rayshard Brooks in his car, which was parked in a Wendy’s drive-in lane, and asking him to move it. They question him and make him take a breathalyser test. The officers then attempt to arrest and handcuff Brooks, leading to a scuffle, which culminates in his shooting. The interaction lasted about 45 minutes. The footage in this video has been edited for length
Continue reading...
The Guardian’s Ankita Rao, reporting from New York, on the mayor’s controversial late-night statements:
Mayor Bill de Blasio took to the podium on Saturday night to tell protestors across the city that they were “heard, loud and clear”.
I’m in Brooklyn to talk about tonight’s protests. https://t.co/oBVXGh7JWo
US prosecutors have filed federal charges against three people in New York, accusing them of using “molotov cocktails” on New York police vehicles during the Friday protests:
BREAKING: Three people charged with federal crimes in connection with Molotov cocktail attacks on the NYPD during #GeorgeFloyd protests in NYC Friday night. pic.twitter.com/dyaDJByMit
Continue reading...Erika Shields says angry reaction is understandable as governor declares state of emergency
After hours of peaceful protest over the death of George Floyd, some demonstrators in downtown Atlanta turned violent on Friday night, smashing police cars, spray-painting a sign at CNN headquarters and breaking into restaurants and stores.
The crowd pelted officers with bottles, chanting “Quit your jobs.”
Continue reading...Joe Biden boasted about his support among African American voters during the fifth Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta on Wednesday. 'I come out of the black community in terms of my support,' Biden said and listed 'the only black African American woman who had ever been elected to the United States Senate' as one of his endorsements, at which the candidate and senator Kamala Harris threw her hands in the air, laughing: 'Nope. That's not true. The other one is here.'
Continue reading...Where’s Mad Men? How did The Sopranos do? Does The Crown triumph? Can anyone remember Lost? And will Downton Abbey even figure? Find out here – and have your say