For Media Contact, further inquiries or interview requests, please contact:
Uchechukwu Onwa – uchechukwu@qdep.org
Dzana Ashworth – dzana.ashworth@gmail.com
On March 16th, 2021, in Atlanta, Georgia, there was a violent attack on Asian-American spa workers. As organizers at the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP), we wish to acknowledge the collective grief, trauma, and fear brought by these attacks and others. Violence towards our Asian-American community has been on the rise, particularly in the last year. Within New York City alone, we have seen a rapid jump of racialized-street-violence, targeting those within our Asian American community.
We wish to create and hold space for radical healing, love, and mourning within our beloved community. We also understand that violence does not occur in a vacuum. State-sanctioned violence compounds and prompts street violence. Asian pathologization as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic, the continued detainment, and deportation of Asian people, and the white supremacist logic at large is a threat to both Asian-American communities as well as other marginalized and often-criminalized groups. In New York City, Mayor DeBlasio has called for increased surveillance via the police in Asian-American communities in response to the growing violence. But police do not provide protection for (im)migrants, sex workers, or queer people. Police abuse and beat members of our collective communities. Police evict our low-income/no-income family. Police are our communities’ first interaction with ICE! Police also criminalize, imprison, and murder our Black and brown siblings, in the name of justice or as a response to “stopping Asian hate.”
Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP) is an LGBTQ+ (im)migrant impacted-led organization. We call for the abolition of borders, gender, and prisons! We refuse and reject this carceral call!
For the last few weeks, the media has continually fixated on identifying if the women who were killed in Atlanta were sex workers or not. We refuse these racialized, gendered, and classed depictions of Asian-American women. Asian-American women, especially within the massage industry, work in a space in which they are hyper-sexualized due in part to historical legacies such as immigration laws like the Page Act, abuse of military prowess during wars in Asia, and the ongoing military occupation of many nations within the Asia-Pacific region. Moreover, we should not question the private lives of Asian-American women in the wake of their death.
However, this is not a rejection of sex work as a profession or a way to earn a living. QDEP is in solidarity with the organizing efforts of Asian-American migrant sex workers. As a collective of queer and transgender BIPOC, who have been impacted by the carceral system, we firmly demand the decriminalization of sex work. Sex workers deserve the right to life! And Sex work provides a critical and essential lifeline for our people. We wish to uplift New York organization Red Canary Song’s statement and memorial for the eight lives lost in Atlanta, and encourage our networks to learn more about the intersection of the immigrant experience and sex work in the United States and abroad.
At QDEP, we know that Black and brown, queer and trans migrants, asylum seeks, and refugees lack essential life-giving resources on their journey to find queer-affirming homes. We lack access to healthcare. We are barred from laboring and supporting ourselves in a capitalism driven society, while our papers and lives are being litigated by the United States. We are criminalized and abused by police and immigration officials for our racial, queer and trans-identities.
We also recognize that the fight against white supremacy creates a competitive dynamic between our many marginalized communities, in order for the white (and white-adjacent) elite to remain in power. QDEP will continue to encourage education around how demands to “StopAsianHate” might negatively target particularly Black communities, intentionally or unintentionally exclude South Asian, Pacific-Islander, and other impacted communities, and oversimplify the complex interconnectedness of these issues. We at QDEP are committed to making and holding space for grieving together, and intentionally moving forward together.
Additional resources and articles regarding Black-Asian solidarity:
- The history of tensions — and solidarity — between Black and Asian American communities, explained
- The Asian American Racial Justice Toolkit
- Anti-Asian Violence and Black-Asian Solidarity Today with Dr. Tamara K. Knopper
- Black and Asian Solidarity in American History: The Power of Unity
The Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP) assists folks coming out of immigration detention in securing structural, health/wellness, educational, legal, and emotional support and services. We work to organize around the structural barriers and state violence that LGBTQIA TS & GNC detainee/undocumented folks face related to their immigration status, race, sexuality, and gender expression/ identity.
We are committed to assisting folks in building lives outside of detention, to breaking down the barriers that prevent folks from building fulfilling and productive lives, and to keeping queer families intact by demanding an end to deportations/ detention/ policing. We believe in creating a narrative of thriving, not just survivin.
QDEP is a proud member of the Detention Watch Network, Freedom For Immigrants, New York Immigration Coalition, AbolishICE NYNJ Coalition, as well as the International Detention Coalition, QDEP is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Transformative Action (CTA). CTA, an educational 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, is legally and financially responsible for all our project activities.
