Life in the Time of COVID-19: Countering Isolation and Anti-Asian Violence through Community, An A/P/A Student Check-in

Co-organized by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU and NYU A/P/A BRIDGE.

REGISTER (NYU students only)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated many forms of structural racism, abandonment, and other existing vulnerabilities, while also making it more difficult to gather, touch, and be together—all things we need to survive and thrive. 

We hold this A/P/A student check-in as a space for students to collectively process this moment and our grief, particularly in light of recent incidents of violence affecting Asian students on campus and beyond. We also gather one year after the tragic shootings that targeted Asian women spa workers in the Atlanta area in March 2021 and one year after our last community check-in on anti-Asian violence. These are not isolated incidents, but are motivated and connected by histories and realities of US empire, xenophobic foreign policies, and racial capitalism, yet we recognize they converge to create feelings of insecurity and fear (see our full statements here and here). How might we create a collective response through community that does not rely on carceral institutions to take care of us?

Join NYU students to reflect, contextualize, and process the specific effects of these multiple pandemics on A/P/A students. We hope this is an opportunity to meet and make community as well as to take steps towards imagining forms of justice that might meet this moment.

Lunch will be provided.

Photograph by Jess X. Snow.