September 11th 2020 marks the nineteenth anniversary since the 9/11 attacks. On this day in 2001, over 3,000 people lost their lives. The government responded by launching a “War on Terror”. The war has cost more than 500,000 lives worldwide, India West reports. But “this number does not even include the lives lost to interpersonal hate violence ignited by this state violence.”
According to Storycorps, Indian American business owner Balbir Singh Sodhi had “donated his money to victims of the attack” four days after 9/11. He was busy planting flowers outside of the Arizona gas station he owned when he was brutally murdered by a racist gunman. It was later revealed that this shooter had told an Applebees waitress, “I’m going to go out and shoot some towel heads” and “We should kill their children, too, because they’ll grow up to be like their parents,” India West reports.
The gunman, Frank Roque, “wanted to kill a Muslim” in retaliation for the attacks, SALDEF details. “He chose Mr. Sodhi because he wore a turban in accordance to his Sikh faith.” Roque then shot at a Lebanese American family business and into the home of an Afghan American family.
“[These were] the first of 645 incidents of violent backlash aimed at Indian American, South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Middle Eastern, and Arab Americans in the first week of 9/11” according to India West. Further hate crimes against these communities have continued since then. According to South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), “679 hate crimes have been recorded since 2015 alone.”
SAALT highlights various hate crimes that have targeted various groups since September 11th. For example, the COVID-19 crisis has seen a dramatic rise in hate violence against East and some Southeast Asian Americans. “We don’t all experience moments of crisis equally,” SAALT reminds us. “Depending on class, immigration status, caste, religious or ethnic background”, we are all affected differently.
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On the front page of their website, SAALT announces “we’re dedicated to acknowledging these disparate experiences, but also what unites us across communities.” They cite a recent incident from The Dallas Morning News earlier this month where “a South Asian family received hate mail saying if Indian and Chinese immigrants don’t stop taking American jobs, ‘we will have no choice but to shoot [Chinese and Indian immigrants] mercilessly…'”
Heeding the words of SAALT, this is just one of many examples “why building collective power is so critical.” As we commemorate those lives ended by hate violence and state violence, we must join together in “fighting racism and white supremacy in all its manifestations.”
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