WHO KILLED CHRISTINA YUNA LEE?!
WHO KILLED CHRISTINA YUNA LEE?!
While the alleged murderer of Lee, Assamad Nash, might suffer from mental illness, what his targeting of Asian women reveals is a larger societal illness.
The recent killing of Christina Yuna Lee chilled our blood. She was a young woman who worked a middle-class job and belonged to the greater Chinatown and Lower East Side community like many of us do. If in the past, we could have still held onto the illusion that with a college education and a stable job we could be treated as human, rather than as immigrants –– Christina's brutal murder forces us to confront that none of us are truly safe. Our illusion crumbles as attacks targeting Asian women increase over the past two years. No job or degree can save us: as women of color, we feel we are forever disrespected, cheapened, objectified, harassed, raped, exploited, abused, and silenced.
Lai Yee Chan, a Chinese-American home attendant worker whom we organize with, has said, “When even our bosses abuse and look down on us at the workplace, how can we expect that we’d be treated with respect by the rest of the society?” She, like the majority of Chinese-speaking immigrant women in New York City who struggle to find other jobs, was forced to work 24 hour shifts, multiple days a week, for 8 years in a row. For each 24-hour shift, her employer Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) violated labor laws and paid her only 13 hours of wages.
As CPC’s illegal practice has gone rampant for decades, it sowed a racist and sexist seed across the nation. While the alleged murderer of Lee, Assamad Nash, might suffer from mental illness, what his targeting of Asian women reveals is a societal illness on a much larger scale. Everyone in America is bombarded with the same narrative that Asian women are submissive and hardworking. Our food is cheap, our labor is cheap, our lives are cheap. Entire industries rely on society's acceptance of our worthlessness so that they can continue to force Asian women into sweatshop conditions, steal our wages, and work us to death. This is the foundation of the lucrative home care industry, with its 24-hour shifts. And this is what makes us as Asian women prime targets for street violence.
In the aftermath of the murder, our elected officials are quick to condone these attacks and street violence. Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou is an Asian woman herself who represents Christina Yuna Lee’s district, and she shed tears for the tragic death of her constituent on TV. She asked, “why don’t people see us as human?” But it is widely known in the Chinatown community that Niou is the very advocate for this violence to continue in real life. She plays a prominent role in supporting the very institutions and organizations that oppress and exploit Asian women. For years, she has been the most fervent defender of Lai Yee’s boss CPC’s inhumane 24-hour workday and abuse of Asian women. Despite hundreds of home attendants’ outcry for the state legislators to end CPC’s violence and to enforce labor laws, Yuh-Line ignores the workers and even spreads racist and sexist lies that Asian women will have to suffer this violence, unless their boss CPC receives more money from the state. How convenient it is for AM Niou to speak for our fellow Asian women who are dead––yet while we the living Asian women fight to end the everyday violence against us, she firmly stands with our bosses and our oppressors!
Stop holding our seniors and sisters hostage, AM Niou! Because of your maintenance of the 24-hour workday, the stereotype of Asians as hardworking and job-stealing is more reinforced than ever. Because of you, Black and white communities alike are pitted against Asians. And because of you, more Christina Yuna Lees would have to sacrifice their lives, and more state funding would go to your own nonprofit friends, the wolves in sheep’s clothing that functions to strengthen the violent system.
We are sickened by having two types of Asian women: one sheds crocodile tears, while the other sheds blood. This is why we call on our dear sisters and brothers of all communities: to actually stop the violence, we must attack its root and end the exploitation. The home attendant Lai Yee, for example, took matters into her own hands instead of continuing to live in fear. She has organized for the past seven years to lead hundreds of fellow home attendant women to fight against the inhumane 24-hour workday, demonstrating that women of color refuse to be bullied and abused. We, too, should join their effort, and convert our fear into power at this very moment by not allowing politicians like AM Niou and nonprofits like CPC to keep killing us behind their progressive facades. Join us in asking AM Niou, CPC, and all the elected officials in the most progressive city in the US: Stop the 24 hour workday, a violence against women of color! Stop killing us, NOW!
Please contact us to discuss our call further and to find out how to get involved:
warv_members@pm.me
Posted on behalf of Women Against Racist Violence.
Written for the upcoming International Women’s Day, 2022.