Refusing state-sanctioned responses to racist violence.

This is a project that seeks to critically explore issues surrounding hate crime legislation and strategise about alternative, community-based responses to racist harm through workshops, writing and sharing resources. It was initiated as an alternative approach to responses that seek to strengthen hate crime policing in light of Covid-fuelled Sinophobic racism. 

We also see this moment as an opportunity to generally think through our conceptions of safety and issues with carceral (policing) ‘solutions’ to racism - particularly in relation to model minority and respectability politics as East and Southeast Asian diaspora. Especially as discourses around ‘the threat from China’ escalate, we cannot rely on the same state that permits and produces these discourses to maintain its power. It’s crucially important that we build networks of solidarity and community-based approaches so that we can have a stronger anti-carceral response when ‘hate crimes’ flare up in future.  

Further, as moves towards introducing legislation for ‘misogyny hate crime’ proceed, we hope to make connections across different communities whose struggles are being co-opted by the state for its own ends.